30 Chapter 30

Closing the door behind him, Toyo didn't bother taking off his heavy leather boots or unequipping his new sword. Sitting down at a small table by the fireplace, he watched curiously as the flames sprang to life. In SAO, whenever a room was inhabited, the fireplace, as well the candle on the wall over the bed would activate. The moment the room became empty again, both the candle and the fire would immediately deactivate and die out. The mechanic was convenient, and offered not only light, but a feeling of warmth and security.

After a moment of gazing into the dancing flames, Toyo caught himself beginning to doze off. Shaking his head violently, he forced himself to sit upright. When they had first reached Trevica during that first week, neither he or Jae had slept much, forcing themselves instead to keep fighting as people died around them. Both brothers had shrugged off the idea of sleep, seeing it only as a waste of time. Sleeping in the game, after all, wasn't sleeping in real life.

But they had been wrong.

Though SAO was a game, the feeling of exhaustion was very real. The human brain needed time to recoup, and when it didn't get that time, it began to make mistakes. Both Toyo and Jae had taken more than a few hits due to the slower reaction time and reflexes that exhaustion brought on. That was what eventually convinced Toyo that they needed to rent a room, though Jae had been against it. Though they were spending considerably less money than most players back at the Town of Beginnings, it was all they could do to pay the rent each week and still have enough left over to repair their gear and buy health crystals.

That morning, they had gotten a lucky break when they stumbled onto a treasure chest containing a thousand Col, not to mention the money they had gotten from selling dropped monster weapons. Examining his new sword, Toyo nodded silently. A good deal of that money went into this alone, but it was worth it. Still, he was more than a little worried about the idea of Jae alone at an item shop. Ordinarily, he would've gone too, if for no other reason than to make sure Jae didn't spend too much. It wasn't that his brother was an idiot when it came to managing finances, it was just that he tended to forget how little they actually had on hand.

Today though, Toyo was simply too tired. On top of that, he had something he needed to do without Jae seeing.

Pulling up his menu, Toyo flicked through the screens until he reached his stats. Both he and Jae had reached level 9 that week, and Toyo hadn't yet applied the accompanying attribute points. A month ago, when the game started, both of them had agreed to put their attribute points into Constitution a agility. Each point put in that category boosted max health by 10, which was generous compared to most MMORPG's. Each general level up automatically boosted max HP by about 50, and with each level up, 3 attribute points were awarded. Putting all attribute points into HP every level, therefore, could buff up one's health substantially, and in relatively quick time. That was what Jae and Toyo had agreed.

Instead, upon selecting his unused attribute points, Toyo chose Strength. .

Ever since the battle with the goblins, and witnessing those three players die in front of them, Toyo had begun applying his attribute points solely into Strength. Each point put in this category boosted damage by between 3 to 5 points, depending on the player's overall level. The murder of all those people forever burned into his mind, Toyo knew that while he couldn't have saved all of them, he also knew that some might still be alive if he had been able to kill their assailants.

Because of this, at level 9, Toyo's base damage output was becoming considerably higher than Jae's, and it would have soon become noticeable had he stuck with an inferior weapon. That was why he hadn't hesitated at the blacksmith shop when Norran presented him with a new sword. If Jae's suspicions about his damage were to be aroused, Toyo could now simply point to his new weapon.