1 Month later (U/N) POV

I was running throughout the town, a boss meeting was taking place and Max wanted to attend it. I didn't much care for it, I would prefer levelling up rather than attending a meeting. Max kept on insisting I went, eventually he told me those who don't attend the meeting don't get the location of the dungeon. However, it doesn't matter either way. Why you may ask, well I lost track of time and spent wayyyy too much time grinding.

As I make my way through town I remind myself that Max is gonna be pissed. Finally, I come across an area that looks like it could be used in a play. Like a dumb idiot, I run in saying I'm here and immediately look for a stupid looking blond kid. Finally, my eyes meet his and I stroll up to him, as I walk toward him you can clearly tell he is embarrassed to know me.

"Hey Max I made it" I announce in a whisper

"Yes I'm aware of that" he replies agitated

I flash him a smile but all he does is glare at me.

"You know, I don't recall you being this carefree," he asks

"We're trapped, nothing we can do about so why not enjoy it," I tell him in a dim-witted way "I don't recall you being so uptight"

Max instantly gets mad," unlike you, I have people I want to see" "when you care for others, you find you miss them when you can't see them," Max says as he finishes his outburst.

"That low" I reply with a grim face.

At this point, Max's face tells me he regrets saying what he did. Not only that but now we got other players looking at us too.

"You wanna go?" I ask pointing to my red cursor above my head. I could see their eyes follow my hand and their faces go pale. When one of them was about to tell everyone I have killed players, I drop the red plastic I was holding.

"Just an allusion boy," I say. You can tell one of them was close to laughing, I'm not sure what made him laugh. Then I turn to look at Max and I see why. Max is sitting on the bench with an agitated smile.

"(U/N) if you would just step out of here, it's embarrassing that you know me. So can you just leave before you make a bigger fool of us. I'll fill you in with the details of the raid." Max says

Without a reply, I slowly stroll toward the exit whistling. That was until a katana went flying toward my head, I easily dodged it, but before I leave I give Max one last look. He is still in the position he threw the katana in.

Finally, I exit, I wait until Max gets out to start pestering him about our strategy.

"Don't need to tickle your pickle, we are only backups if something goes wrong. We don't need to fight otherwise. You know if you didn't act the way you did I'm sure our levels could have gotten us a better role in the raid." Max responds

" your the only one tickling a pickle, and what's the point of a game if you don't have fun" I reply

Max just does a face-palm

"But I got it ok I'll be ready for tomorrow," I say acting a little like myself

Max just says sweet and walks away. It's been like this for a while now. The first few days of SAO we mostly stuck together but to gain levels faster we split up when we go grinding. But we always meet back up at the pub. However, that wasn't the case for today. When I arrived at the Nic and Dime pub, I and sat on a chair to wait for Max.

I waited for a few hours, I didn't mind since the NPC waitress was pretty hot. It became apparent that Max was not coming, so instead, I rented a room and sleep for the night.

When I woke up it was from a notification from Max

Max: (U/N) time for the boss battle. Meet me on the place on the map

                    Attachment:1
I check the map out and start making my way to the position. When I arrive I see a bunch of players and Max is among them.

"Yo" I greet him

"Ok let's do this," He says with a grin on his face

Finally, I haven't seen Max with a grin since the beginning of all this.

"Excited or what," I ask

"Yea a little, but we don't know what to expect," says Max

"Eh, I'm sure we we'll be fine" I reply
​
The other players start moving toward the dungeon.

"Well, time to go I guess," Max says
We follow the main group for a while until we reach some giant doors.

"O by the way, what's the boss?" I ask

Max just looks at me with bewildered eyes

"What," I ask

He just huffs out some air " the boss's name is lilfang the kobold lord, you don't need to know much more then that"

" ah I see"

Suddenly the doors opened and everyone charged in, at least everyone but me and Max. We hung out at the back as the plan told us to. However, after a while, we both realized that we will be seeing some action.

When the boss was on its last leg the leader of the raid party, a blue-haired "knight" rushed in to get the last attack. I'm not sure why he is doing that but he fails. He must have miss judged the length of the sword because it seemed he wasn't expecting to get hit as far back as he was. Either way, he was dumbass.

As soon as the sword strike him, everything went south. He was sent flying towed the other end of the hall. I and Max went into action and I could spot a black haired guy trying to give the blue-haired guy a potion but he strangely rejected it. As Max and I closed in, something unexpected happened. During my charge from the back of the field to the frontline, the boss regenerated half of its last health bar, before we started charging it only had a sixteenth. I may have noticed but Max didn't. He charged the beast without a second thought because from his knowledge it would take one hit to kill it.

Max thrusts his katana into the boss's flesh making a pixel cut. It took away half of its health. However, he wasn't expecting a fatal blow from an enemy he thought was dead. Sadly that's the reality of this situation. Max got hit pretty hard by the blunt end of the weapon, it was a harder hit then what the other guy got. I watched Max's body fly to the wall of the room all I could think off were my words at the beginning of the game. "Piece of cake", wow I was underestimating this game.

Max's body hit the wall and shattered, tears threatened to leave my eyes. My best friend just died. He left behind his family, his mother, his father, and his twin sister. I felt an unexplainable rage flow through my body. My body said one thing, leap, and I did. I leapt toward the boss and covered some 20 meters in a matter of milliseconds. When I was face to face with the boss, I thrusted my sword with all my might. The sword cleanly cut the boss, when I landed on the other side I was facing the boss.

The boss only had a little HP left, but the cooldown from my attack was still in effect. When faced with the monster about to bring his sword down on me, I didn't feel like I needed to survive. Instead, I invited the sword to kill me. My prayer was not answered the way I was hoping. I see the black-haired kid slice the boss on his side, ending his life as he turned into pixels.

The kid looked at me and started walking toward me. When he arrived he held out his hand.

"That was a pretty cool attack there," he says

"Was it?" I say in a grim voice.

"I gotta thank you, if you had not done that attack then taking him down would have been a lot harder." He says

"Yea," I say in a daze

"By the way, what's your name," he asks

(U/N)