"Hello."

Sho eyed Toshiro a bit warily for a brief moment before responding. "Hello. You're Daito?"

"Yes. And Sho?"

Sho gave a slight nod, so subtle that it would've been easy to miss. But Toshiro's senses were sharp, especially in the virtual world where he'd spent so much time honing them.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," Toshiro said, trying to fill in the silence.

"Likewise."

Toshiro supposed that Sho was just a person of few words. That was fine with him, by all means. Less energy wasted on frivolous pleasantries that had no real meaning. Just enough said to get across basic communication.

"So, let's get started, shall we? I'm not entirely sure what this quest requires of us, I didn't really read it." Toshiro chuckled a bit sheepishly.

"But shouldn't you know what it's about? You chose it, didn't you?" Sho's words, rather than being harsh or imposing, seemed to portray genuine surprise at Toshiro's lack of attentiveness.

"With a random number generator."

"Oh."

Toshiro expected Sho to further question him, but he simply left it at that. Toshiro took the silence as an opportunity to more carefully examine the world he was in, which he'd simply glanced around before spotting Sho.

They seemed to be in some kind of volcanic island. The sky around them was dark, but the lack of light from there was more than made up for by the red-hot glowing lava visible through the cracks of the dark earth.

He took a moment to pull up the menu on his screen to read, or more like glance through, the challenge introduction.

Welcome to this world of perilous adventure...nothing relevant...your mission is to reach the vault hidden in the volcano, which you will be able to access by reaching the crater at the top.

"Okay, got the gist of it, sounds self-explanatory enough," Toshiro said.

"You're done reading already?" Sho asked.

"Skimmed. Most of these are about the same, details that don't really matter."

Sho blinked. "Alright, I suppose," he said, but he didn't sound very convinced.

"Well, shall we get started? We can just start making our way up the volcano. I expect there'll probably be some monsters that will start attacking us; I'll watch the left side and you can watch the right."

At another one of Sho's terse nods, they began the trek upwards.

Within a minute, the first monster came, a grotesque, unruly beast that clawed toward Sho. He easily pulled out a sword and sliced it through. Toshiro was impressed by the swiftness and efficiency of the action: there was no wasted gesture, just the right amount of momentum needed for a clean cut. Even if Sho was a recent addition to the leaderboard, his refined reflexes must have been the product of tireless, repeated training.

But soon Toshiro's attention had to turn back to the challenge at hand, as he had his own beast to deal with. A mechanical, dinosaur-like creature thundered toward him, and he began to hack it down.

As they gained altitude, the opponents came in faster intervals and required more effort to defeat. But the leaderboard hadn't lied—Sho was an impressive fighter. He was able to keep up with the incoming flood of creatures as well as Toshiro could. Close to the top, their swords were flying, gliding through the air in strike after strike, no time to hesitate.

"Cool, we're here," Toshiro said, a bit unnecessarily, once they reached the crater. "You want to do the honors?" He gestured toward the chest that lay half-buried in the magma, but where the lid was still accessible without getting burned.

Sho hesitated, for the briefest of seconds. "Is it really alright for me to do something so important?"

Toshiro looked at him. "Yeah, why not?"

"Just—" Sho stopped himself. "Okay." He started making his way toward the vault, before a towering creature appeared from the crater, oozing lava as if its essence were the volcano itself.