Tallyn Edition: Chapter 1

Summary
''In need of information to further his goal, Tallyn undertakes a high risk mission for the sake of one of the few people in the game who could give him what he needs. In <>, living and surviving are two different ways of life.''

Aincrad 16th Floor, March 26th, 2023, 19:57
When you ask someone; "what is a mercenary?", the answer is one of two that will inevitably be the same no matter who you hear it from.

A person who is hired as a soldier or personal sword in exchange for wealth or material gains.

Or a person who is solely motivated by the desire for gains that they sell themselves out to who ever pays the most.

I'm not denying that neither of these are true. They both are true definitions. The word itself is English, originating from the Latin word, mercēs, meaning a wage or price. The best translation of the word in Japanese is "yōhei" (傭兵) meaning "hired soldier", but that isn't exactly the same now is it. A soldier is a professional fighter, whereas a mercenary is anyone good at what they do and are willing to share it for the right payment. But the payment doesn't need to be <>.

My payment was nothing so trivial or meaningless as pieces of data that looked like coins. I didn't need the 1's and 0's in binary that made up the currency of this world. I needed information, and the few people that had any and knew how to get any were like rhodium; so rare and more precious than platinum, but too often or not largely ignored. Unlike rhodium however, the "info brokers" did this deliberately by charging players too high for information that was utterly useless compared to the <> they coughed up for it.

The 16th floor is fairly average when you look at the entirety of <>; a grassland floor, mixed with forest patched areas that made good monster grinding spots with high enough levels to gain quick XP. The town on that floor escapes me, despite passing it a few times, it was one of those places I would rather forget, much like the rest of this damn world sometimes. Unlike Starting City on the 1st floor, which remains unforgettable, the 16th floor settlement doesn't exist in my memory. Only the fields and woods that surround it.

On the far east side of the floor, just before you reach the edges of the floor that lead outside to the balcony that overlooks the endless sky above, across,. . . and below, there was a meeting place arranged between an info broker, and with a group of players that made their base around this area, The Leaches.

An group, or more specifically a guild that commits a crime as deemed by the system become what the players identified as an "orange guild". While they were not murders, the crimes they commit were comparable to killing a player without having the edge to do it themselves. PKing wasn't the Leaches style, but they would take all that a player had and leave them to fend for themselves in a killing zone with high enough monsters to do the job if the players didn't escape in time.

This time, my attention was for them. I'm not the hero who rushes in to see justice done on these criminals. I'm not the lawman doing his job because it's right. Frankly, only the stupid would allow themselves to fall for such an obvious ploy, some even asking for a death note. The smart players were those that stayed on the first floor away from danger, or stayed in the towns on the higher floors, or took part in guilds of five-six people and stayed in view of safe zones. If you weren't one of these people, you were gonna die one of these days, sooner than playing it safe.

My client was one of the people who usually played safe, but lived too dangerously, and this time she was leading herself on into an obvious trap. So obvious in fact she knew that she would need someone like me watching her back in case it was how she predicted it. But being an info broker, you knew that a meeting outside of the safe zone was asking for trouble to pay a visit.

My contract was protection; my client was Argo, the Rat. A former Beta tester,. . . just like me.

Aincrad 10th Floor, March 22nd, 2023, 13:21
To be continued.