A bright blue light emanated from Seiya's one-handed sword, the visual effect of a sword skill activating. A speck of cold light appeared at the tip of his blade. In the next moment, his sword shot forward like a bolt of lightning, plunging directly into the Dire Wolf Leader's eye.
A shower of red, blood-like pixels burst from the boss's eye as it let out a pained shriek. It was clear that a creature's eye was a weak point. With his sword fully embedded in the Dire Wolf Leader's eye, the field boss was instantly killed by the multiplied damage from the weak-point attack.
With the Dire Wolf Leader dead, the last wolf that was chasing Kirito shattered like glass and vanished. Kirito was stunned. He had expected the boss to summon more wolves and go into a berserk state once its HP dropped to 10%, but Seiya had completely skipped that phase and one-shot the boss with a high-damage weak-point attack.
"Hey, that's not what we agreed on! We said the last hit, and the reward, would go to the person who was distracting the wolves!" In SAO, the player who lands the final blow on a boss gets a huge bonus reward. According to their agreement, the final reward would go to the player who had the harder job.
"I said I was sorry! I didn't expect the so-called field boss to be so weak. Besides, I gave you all the other drops from the boss, didn't I?"
Kirito looked at the pile of junk he had received, then at the wolf-fang necklace Seiya was wearing around his neck, and a wave of jealousy hit him. The other drops were valuable, but they were nothing compared to the necklace Seiya got from the boss's final-hit reward.
Item: Wolf's Heart Necklace
Type: Accessory
Effect: Increases experience gained by 20%.
Bound to: Wenren Seiya
When Kirito saw the item's stats, his eyes turned red with envy. Most rare items in SAO were dropped by bosses or given as special rewards. And even those rare items were usually just temporary gear for players as they leveled up. However, a select few items had no level restriction and scaled with the player's stats—these were the rarest of the rare!
The Wolf's Heart Necklace was one such item. It also had the incredibly rare effect of boosting experience gain. This might not seem like a big deal in the early game, but Kirito, as a veteran gamer, knew this was a divine artifact that would pay off immensely in the mid to late game.
Though the necklace was a top-tier item, Kirito could only marvel at Seiya's luck. The item was also bound to Seiya, and he was his only friend in this game, so what could he do?
Time flew by like a flash, and a month had passed since the players were trapped in SAO. Yet, in that time, they still hadn't managed to clear the first floor and enter the second. During the beta test, players had already reached the eighth floor in the same amount of time. Logically, with the experienced beta testers, their progress should have been even faster, but that wasn't the case.
The reason was simple: during the beta test, players were fearless because they were essentially immortal. If they failed once, they could try again and again. Bosses were no match for their relentless assault. But now, they were playing for their lives. With real fear, their progress had slowed to a crawl.
Because of the slow progress, a strategy meeting was to be held today in Horbana, the town on the first floor, to discuss the boss of the first floor. The one who called the meeting was a handsome blue-haired man named Diabel. Those invited were the top-ranked players who had made the most progress.
"Seiya said he was busy and told me to come alone. How can he be late for an important strategy meeting like this? What's that guy even doing?" In the past month, after a few initial days of playing with Kirito, Seiya had been going his own way once he fully understood the game's mechanics. After completing the merchant quest, Seiya and Kirito received the Windflower Sword, and Seiya also gained the friendship of the merchant, Messi, by using his guise as a "noble's son." Using his smooth talking and a large amount of starting capital, Seiya had already started building his own merchant guild.
Kirito was confident he and Seiya could take down the first-floor boss together, but his friend was preoccupied with his business ventures and was ignoring the main quest, which was why Kirito had to attend this meeting.
Diabel, the blue-haired man who had called the meeting, was speaking confidently in front of everyone, looking every bit like a leader. Just as everyone was nodding along and preparing to follow his plan, a spiky-haired player named Kibaou suddenly jumped out of the crowd and put a target on the backs of the "beaters." According to him, the reason for the high death toll was the selfishness of the "beaters."