Noah kept searching, and eventually found some footprints in the soft soil. He estimated that four or five people had walked there. As a test, Noah walked in the same soil, and didn’t leave any footprints. Now convinced that he was in the right track, he followed it.

  “You have learned Tracking.”

  That was a nice surprise. Thanks to the proficiency, he now could see a slight glow around the prints, that help him see more of them, including on dry ground.

  The prints led him out of the forest. In front of him was the massive wall that reached the fake sky. He had reached the periphery of the first floor. And the footsteps stopped in a patch of green grass, between the wall and the forest.

  Wary of his surroundings, Noah closely examined the ground. Eventually, he found a straight, narrow gap on the ground. A trapdoor.

  Noah found the handle, camoufged under a patch of grass, and carefully lifted it. Crude stone stairs led to an underground tunnel, running parallel to the wall. Luminescent crystals embedded on the walls were giving enough light to see what was ahead.

  Noah closed the trapdoor behind him and progressed carefully looking at the ground and walls carefully. He was wary of traps. A notification appeared.

  “You have learned Hiding.”

  He raised an eyebrow, as Cardinal apparently decided he was doing a good enough attempt at skulking around to be awarded for it. He closed the notification and came to a crossroad. He was hearing noises coming from the passage in front. But he first decided to go left. He wanted to do some more exploring before confronting the bandits, to reduce the chances of finding himself in a situation where he would have bandit on his front and back at the same time.

  The corridor ended with two door-like openings, with draw curtains hiding what was inside.

  Noah carefully pushed aside the first curtain. The small room behind it had a pair of mattresses on the ground, and bulky man was sleeping, his back turned toward the door. The small triangur icon above his health bar was red, noting him as either a hostile NPC, or as a pyer that had murdered others. In this case, it was obviously the former.

  Not missing the opportunity, Noah aimed at the sleeping man’s throat and shoved his sword in it.

  -88.

  The man convulsed as he was jerked awake.

  As his throat had been pierced, he was afflicted with both the mute debuff and the bleeding damage over time.

  Noah didn’t wait, retracted his sword, and struck again at his throat.

  -112.

  The man died, his body disappearing in blue polygons.

  “Result.

  Exp: 60

  Cor: 100

  Items: 3”

  The three-digits damage number surprised him, as he was expecting another 88 for a normal blow in a weak point. But it wasn’t the time and pce to ponder about it, and Noah silently left the room, making certain no one was in the hallway.

  The next room was trickier. There were three mattresses and two men sleeping, and he needed to kill both before they could scream.

  Taking a deep breath, He crept toward the closest one, and decided to strike at his sword twice, as fast as he could.

  -88, -88.

  The man died, but the characteristic noise of the body disappearing woke up the second bandit.

  “Wha…” He started, and Noah didn’t leave him time to understand what was happening, rise from his mattress, or reach for the weapon beside it. He managed to silence the bandit with another thrust at his throat, then sshed twice at his chest.

  -88, -44, -44.

  This bandit died, too.

  Among the loot left but those two bandits, there was a thick copper dagger with +2 attack, and Noah took it in his right hand.

  He had no dual-yield proficiency and would get no Sword Skills from using them, but he figured it was better than an empty hand.

  There was no treasure or anything worth picking up in the dark room, so Noah silently walked back to the intersection. The noises coming from what was now at his left continued, so Noah ignored them again and went straight ahead. There was a single room there, rger than the others, with a rge wooden table and a half-dozen chairs. On the back of the room was a crude kitchen and a bunch of utensils. But there was no oven or firepce. The bandits likely didn’t want to risk smoke revealing their hideout’s location.

  Again, there was nothing worth taking, so Noah returned to the intersection. He took the remaining passage and turned a corner. Ten meters in front of him was a single thick door, and the voices coming from it were more distinct. Noah listened as he cautiously crept closer. The voices were from two, no, three different men, and one woman. From their pitch, the men were boasting or taunting, while the woman was definitely very unhappy.

  Noah took a deep breath. Very slowly, he started to open the door.

  It made a creaking sound.

  And they must have noticed, as one of the men abruptly stopped talking.

  Abandoning his pn to try to jump at the bandits, Noah crouched slightly, leaning forward, in a posture that was close to Linear’s premotion, but only close. And he waited.

  The door opened from the inside, and Noah unched himself at the bandit, stabbing at his chest with both weapons. The bandit NPC barely had time to widen his eyes in arm. He hadn’t expected to see anyone, or at most one of his companions peeking on them.

  -44, -37.

  “Gah!” He gasped as he stumbled back, and Noah struck again with his Anneal Bde, perforating the bandit’s skull by the let eye.

  -88.

  Another bandit died, and only then did Noah take a look at the rest of the room.

  “Intruder! Wake up!” One bandit howled as he was drawing his sword and moving toward him, while another with the designation of Bandit Chief had his pants down, and was still connected to a naked girl bound on a table.

  Noah focused on the armed bandit. He had to kill him fast, or would end up facing the two of them at the same time. And the bandit seemed to know it, as he made no move to attack and stayed in a defensive posture, trying to keep Noah away.

  Noah jumped forward. The bandit managed to parry his sword and deflect it to the side, but didn’t have anything to block Noah’s dagger, and was stuck in the chest.

  -37.

  Desperately, the bandit swung his sword wildly, more trying to force Noah back than in any calcuted intention to wound him. Noah blocked with the dagger, and struck at the bandit’s right leg with his sword.

  -44.

  Taking a small step back, he lifted his left arm in position and was about to trigger a Linear, when he saw movement on his left and jumped to his right in a hurry.

  The bandit chief had given up on covering himself, leaving his junk dangling between his legs disgracefully, and was in the Horizontal pre-motion, his axe ready.

  Noah’s side jump just barely allowed him to evade, and since the bandit chief was now frozen on a vulnerable position, Noah used the opportunity to make his own Vertical.

  His sword swung down on the bandit’s exposed arm, cutting it off with a maiming hit.

  -104.

  “Argh!”

  Noah sshed at his throat with the Anneal bde, causing another critical strike and a second stack of bleeding, and kicked him away. The Bandit Chief only had a sliver of HP bar remaining, and the bleeding effect would kill him in seconds.

  And Noah suddenly felt great pain on his left fnk and back, as the other bandit used the distraction to hit him with a 2-hits Sword Skill.

  -37, -37.

  Noah recognized what the bandit had just done as being Horizontal Arc, a more evolved version of Horizontal adding a return strike to it.

  “What are you guys doing? Help!” The remaining bandit, panicked, shouted again as he saw the bandit chief’s body shatter way.

  Noah cautiously got closer, and when the bandit swung his sword again, he stepped to the side and jumped forward, pushing the bandit’s bde away with the dagger while he stabbed the bandit’s fnk with the sword.

  -44.

  This was enough, and the st bandit died.

  Naoh got three notifications.

  “Result.

  Exp: 100

  Cor: 150

  Items: 3”

  “Result.

  Exp: 60

  Cor: 100

  Items: 1”

  “You have learned Parry.”

  For a moment, the only sounds in the room were the sobs of the girl. The looked at him in fear.

  “Your father sent me. You’re safe now. I’ll bring you home.” He said with sympathy.

  The mentions of ‘father’, ‘safe’ and ‘home’ had the desired effect, and the girl’s scared sobs turned into a sorrowful weeping, but she did panic as she saw him approach with the knife. He cut off the rope binding her limbs, and found from his storage one of the loots he had gotten from the bandit chief, a crude cotton tunic. He helped the girl put it on.

  Noah quickly surveyed the room. There were some Cor lying around, but he was mostly interested in the rge Chest in the corner.

  Opening it, found a handful of metal and leather restraints of various kinds, shackles, cuffs and even a leather body harness. But it was the st two items that made him want to jump and scream “jackpot!”.

  “Unlimited Teleport Crystal.”

  “Tome of Lilith.”

  In SAO, the vast majority of items had their name written in bck in the interface, designating normal items. Some were written in blue, for exceptional items that had a little something extra added to them, besides their Attack or Defense stats. And unique items were colored orange. Noah knew this from reading a dev blog, but as far as he knew, no beta tester had ever dropped a unique item. And certainly not the Tome of Lilith, for obvious reasons.

  He reread the description that appeared when he focused on the item.

  “Unique item. One-use item, disappear after usage. Add Accessory Crafting proficiency. Add many crafting patterns to Light Metal Armor Forging, Sewing, Carpentry and Leathercrafting. Produced items can have intrinsic modifiers.”

  Noah only had to gnce back at the chest’s content to know just what kind of patterns the tome was about, and he looked forward to discovering and testing each and every single one of them.

  The Unlimited Teleport Crystal was another unique item. Normally, Teleport crystals were one-time use items, and their drop rate was very low, making them items to use only in dire emergencies. But as the name implied, this one could be used as much as he wanted.

  Tempering his excitement, Noah turned to the girl, who was starting to calm down.

  “Let’s get you home. I’ll escort you back.”

  “…Yes, please.”

  The trip home was uneventful. He had to dispatch a handful of Nepenthes, but they barely deyed him. When they came into view of the vilge, the girl and her father who were waiting anxiously ran to hug each other, and Noah waited to the side with a slightly awkward expression.

  When the father looked at Noah, he started reporting.

  “I found their hideout, and killed 6 bandits. There was no sign of there being more of them, so I assume it’s a clean sweep. Unfortunately, I didn’t find your daughter in time to prevent her from being… I’m sorry.”

  The NPC closed his eyes in pain for a moment, before he looked at Noah again.

  “Thank you anyway, Adventurer. I don’t have much, but I’ll give you all the money I…”

  Noah shook his head.

  “Don’t bother. I already received enough by seizing items from the bandits. I don’t want money from you, not for this kind of mission.”

  The girl also looked at him, and bowed deeply.

  “Thank you, Sir. I am very grateful for your help.”

  “I’m happy that you’re safe now. I hope you’ll be able to heal from this.”

  Noah received the notification of the quest being a success, giving him some more experience, turned away and returned to the inn.

  By spending some Cor, he convinced the innkeeper to show him a few more of his recipes, gaining some points in cooking in the process. His leather working and bcksmithing weren’t going to increase much if he stayed there. He would soon need to leave, to find more ingredients and such.

  He returned to his room early that night. As soon as he closed the door, his system interrupted his thoughts.

  [User, the quest you fulfilled has another reward. The Teleportation Crystal is already preset with a destination.]

  [Oh… That’s interesting.]

  Noah took the crystal, and said “Teleportation” aloud. Noah’s body shone with a blue light not very different from what happened when someone died, and disappeared from the room.

  He was now in a rge room, devoid of furniture. From the windows, he saw that he was on the first floor. Noah started exploring his surroundings. He was in a rge room, almost a small mansion, with two floors and a rge basement. In addition to a rge kitchen and rge living room were nine other rooms.

  From the windows, Noah saw a fairly rge circur garden surrounding the house, and beyond that... The house and the garden were actually the top of an artificial isnd, several dozens of meters above water level. From what he could see, the whole floor was an enormous ke with a central isnd, upon which a pyer city was built. Hundreds of smaller isnds dotted the ke, linked together by long, narrow stone bridges. But almost all of those smaller isnds were barely emerging from the water. Only three rger isnds were standing on an elevated position, and from the point of view, Noah concluded that he was atop a fourth one.

  The view was simply magnificent. But when he tried to open the door or the windows to get a better view, he found out that they were all locked.

  [This huge house? Is that the reward? Lilith is extremely generous!]

  [User will still have to pay for the house, valued at 42 million Cor. This high-grade housing unit is located on the 24th floor. Once User’s Cor amount exceed a hundred thousand, all excess Cor will be used to repay for the house. One User reach this floor, and complete the payment for the house, the doors and windows will be unlocked. Until then, User’s Teleportation Crystal is the only way to reach the house.]

  [Well, even if I have to pay for it, just being able to reserve this splendid house is still a very generous gift. And I get the implied message.]

  The Tome of Lilith, as well as the ability to use this house early, made it clear to Noah that Lilith didn’t want to wait months to see him get started on gathering sves.

  Seeing the empty state of the house, Noah added Carpentry to the list of Proficiencies he wanted to level up soon. With a satisfied nod, he teleported back into his room at the inn.

  As he removed his clothes and entered the bed, he reviewed his pns once more. He would wait to reach lv3 in his Yin-Yang system, to gain another 10% on his speed and reflexes. Then, he would go confront the wolves, and head closer to the general area where the byrinth’s entrance must be located. He would also need to chat with Lisbeth every day, to slowly get closer to her, and keep regur contact with Argo.