-245- Part ways eventually

When Rozen and Kirito returned to the house once again, they saw the NPC woman in the kitchen cooking something. The "?" symbol above her head had changed to a "!" symbol.

This indicated that the quest was in progress.

Kirito took a step forward ahead of Rozen, retrieved the ovule of the Little Nepenthes from his inventory, and handed it to the NPC.

The NPC was immediately grateful, tears streaming down her face as she thanked Kirito repeatedly. She accepted the ovule, then went into the room and took out a long sword with a red scabbard.

Although the sword looked old, it emitted a presence far superior to the early-game equipment, making it a remarkable one-handed sword.

This was the quest reward for completing the secret medicine of the forest quest: the Anneal Blade.

In that moment, Kirito received this high-performance one-handed sword, capable of being used even until the 3rd floor, and a window popped up in his field of vision, indicating quest completion. He also gained bonus experience points.

Rozen followed suit, completing the quest in the same manner, and obtained the Anneal Blade as well.

This had resolved Rozen's urgent need. After all, his bronze sword's durability was already quite depleted due to the intense monster hunting. Repairing it alone would incur a substantial cost. Now, having a better and more durable weapon was much more beneficial.

At the same time, Rozen also gained a significant amount of experience points.

"Clang!"

As golden light enveloped his body and the sound of music lingered in his ears, Rozen leveled up once again, reaching level 4.

Rozen then allocated his attribute points again, maintaining the ratio of 2 points in Strength and 1 point in Agility, ready to continue this distribution pattern.

Afterward, Rozen and Kirito left the house together.

Standing in front of the house, they began to discuss their next steps.

"What's your plan from here?" Kirito asked, initiating the conversation.

Having completed the recent quest, both of them were now ahead of the other players in terms of both weapons and levels. They were likely already at the top tier of players.

Among the ten thousand players, more than ninety percent were surely still in the starting town, struggling to make sense of the chaos. Less than ten percent might have started to take action. Rozen and Kirito were the ones who acted early and gained an edge over the rest.

However, this lead was surpassable.

"We're still at a low level. If we can reach level 5 before dawn, we could hunt the Large Nepenthes deep in the forest. Although they are level 5 monsters, we have the Anneal Blade now, so it should be manageable."

Kirito suggested this course of action.

But...

"You go ahead," Rozen replied. "I want to strengthen my weapon first."

"Strengthen your weapon?" Kirito was momentarily puzzled, then surprised. "Are you already prepared to do that?"

"Yeah," Rozen nodded, explaining, "I've opened quite a few treasure chests before and obtained a good amount of enhancement materials. If all goes well, I should be able to enhance the Anneal Blade to +2."

In Sword Art Online, weapons could indeed be enhanced.

However, in SAO, the weapon enhancement system was relatively straightforward.

When players enhanced their weapons, they could only choose one parameter to improve.

These five enhancement parameters were:

1. Sharpness.

2. Quickness.

3. Accuracy.

4. Heaviness.

5. Durability.

Enhancing Sharpness improved attack power.

Enhancing Quickness improved attack speed.

Enhancing Accuracy increased the critical hit rate.

Enhancing Heaviness wasn't about increasing the weapon's weight, but rather reducing the encumbrance of the weapon. This allowed players with insufficient carrying capacity to equip items earlier. Reducing encumbrance also improved agility and dexterity, thus increasing the capacity of the inventory.

Enhancing Durability, as the name suggests, increased the weapon's durability, preventing it from breaking too quickly.

Players could entrust NPCs or players with blacksmithing skills to attempt enhancement. They could submit specific enhancement materials corresponding to the parameter they wanted to improve, though there was a certain chance of failure.

Each successful enhancement would add a +1, +2, +3 suffix to the weapon's name. However, this didn't imply that higher enhancement numbers equated to stronger weapons; the impact depended on the enhancement parameters.

For instance, a +3 dagger could have enhanced its Heaviness three times, reducing the almost negligible weight, which would be a waste.

So, the enhancement parameters of a weapon greatly influence its value, and players base their trades on this factor.

By the way, in player trades, a weapon marked as +4 with enhancement parameters of +2 Sharpness, +1 Accuracy, and +1 Durability would be represented as "2S,1A,1D" for short.

"S" stands for Sharpness, "Q" for Quickness, "A" for Accuracy, "H" for Heaviness, and "D" for Durability. This is what it means.

Of course, weapons cannot be endlessly enhanced.

Each weapon has a limited number of times it can be enhanced, some more, some less. And regardless of whether the enhancement succeeds or fails, each enhancement attempt consumes one enhancement chance.

For example, the Anneal Blade has eight enhancement chances, meaning it can be enhanced a maximum of eight times. Once eight enhancements, successful or not, have been attempted, the weapon can no longer be enhanced.

Because of this, every player needs to gather various materials to improve the success rate of enhancement, and this is what makes the game challenging.

Rozen had collected quite a few enhancement materials from opening treasure chests earlier. Using these materials to enhance the Anneal Blade, if everything goes well, should be enough to bring the Anneal Blade to +2.

However...

"There's no enhancement service NPC blacksmith here. I need to go to the next main district," Rozen told Kirito.

The implication was clear.

"You don't have to wait for me. Go level up first," Rozen said casually. "After all, we're connected as friends, and you can contact me anytime."

This was the moment when the two of them were about to part ways.

"Is that so?" Kirito fell silent at once.

Rozen sighed internally.

He was well aware of the immense pressure Kirito, an ordinary person, must be feeling, being alone in this death game.

But there was nothing he could do. This was the path Kirito had chosen.

Ever since Kirito had dashed out of the starting town alone and taken the lead in competing for resources to become stronger, he had been destined to be a solo player.

The reason he and Rozen could share resources was twofold: because they were family, and because with only one person around, resource competition wasn't much of an issue.

However, if Rozen made Kirito waste precious early leveling time by accompanying him to the city, Kirito probably wouldn't agree, right?

This wasn't selfishness; it was a decision made to survive.

Naturally, Rozen was in the same position.

He had his own plans and couldn't always accompany Kirito.

So, even if they were currently acting together, they would have to separate sooner or later. Otherwise, at the beginning of the game, they wouldn't have just added each other as friends and then parted ways.

However...

"Your situation is quite dangerous now," Kirito expressed his concern.