Sword Art Online Progressive 4

Posting chapter 10.
Please point out any typos or errors.
Broken ellipsis and inconsistent quote marks symbols are trivial and I'll fix them later, feel free to ignore broken commas and dots too, though pointing out any punctuation that seems extra rare is helpful.
Still posting 1 chapter a day, nnnhnnn.
Also, if anyone has HQ illustrations from Yen Press please share them.
And yes, I'll share the full volume later.

Chapter 1: (colored illustrations inside)
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5 Part 1:
Chapter 5 Part 2:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 7:
Chapter 8: Chapter 9:

10
“SWIIIITCH!!”

Shivata and Liten gave the command in unison from behind their steel shields, blocking the small (though still over six-foot-tall) golem's three-part punch attack.

They used the force of the punches to leap backward, and Hafner charged between them, his greatsword raised. The thick blade glowed orange, and the system lurched the heavy warrior forward.

The overhead double-handed sword skill Cascade hit the small golem on the forehead, blasting away the remaining third of its HP. It fell apart along the seams of its limbs, and once it was a lifeless hunk of rock, shattered into little blue shards.

“That’s quite some attack power,” Nezha murmured in admiration.

I turned to him and whispered, “True, but he also hit it in the right spot. Did you notice how the golem had a symbol of some kind on its forehead?”

“Ah, right.”

"That's the weak point of all golems, including the floor boss. Naturally, the boss is way taller, so normal attacks and most sword skills won’t reach it..."

“I see. But this thing will," Nezha said, holding up the metal circle in his right hand.

"Yeah, the chakram can hit it. Just like with the minotaur king on the second floor, you wait for the right timing, and you'll be able to cancel the boss’s special.”

“Got it.”

Meanwhile, A-Team finished its post-battle cleanup, and party leader Hafner gave the call to continue onward. I raised a hand in acknowledgment and gave the order to my team—B-Team—to follow.

The two parties had been taking turns fighting monsters, and for being assembled on the spot, the teamwork wasn’t bad. While A-Team could have used the golden pattern of guard/switch/ attack, I was more concerned about B-Team, which was stuck repeating attack/switch/attack. But between Agil's two-handed ax and Wolfgang’s greatsword, they had enough power to knock back our opponents, giving Asuna and me the time to leap in and follow up.

What was most important, however, was the combination work of the two parties. At the larger chambers where we ran into mini-bosses, we tried having A-Team defend and debuff, while B-Team attacked from the sides and rear, but as I feared, there were a few times when B-Team got carried away and earned too much hate, drawing the boss's aggro away from A-Team. Since the hate statistic was hidden from players, we would just have to consciously hold B-Team back from attacking too much in the big fight ahead.

Until experiencing it for myself, I had no idea how difficult it was to be a raid leader. I understood a bit better Lind's feelings now, trying to lead his guild with ironclad rules and clear hierarchies. And on the other hand, I could also imagine Kibaou's desire to raise the feeling of guild solidarity and giving in to the temptation of the guild flag.

Once this mission was over I'd go back to my easy solo—er, duo—life, and never step into a leadership position again, I swore to myself as I walked down the dim hallway. Asuna prodded my arm to get my attention.

“Hmm...?”

“You know, I think it’s getting more like it,” she commented. I looked around and saw that the dungeon itself was indeed changing from its previous design.

The walls were scrawled with mysterious ancient letters and the massive pillars were now carved into stacks of angular golem heads, while the floor and ceiling were made of polished black granite. The increased interior detail was a sign that we were approaching the boss chamber.

I checked my window to see that it was after seven o'clock. Three hours had passed since we entered the dungeon, and considering the number of staircases we'd climbed, it was about time for us to reach the goal.

“Finally at the boss chamber, huh? I should have figured the labyrinth tower wasn’t going to be easy to rush all the way through,” Agil remarked, his hands on the back of his bald head.

I smirked at that. "Actually, the fifth- and sixth-floor towers have fewer rooms and simpler layouts. The tenth-floor labyrinth is insanely huge and complex, and even after three days in the beta, we never made it to the boss chamber."

“Ugggh...” groaned Agil’s companion, Wolfgang. “So you guys just gave up on gettin’ ahead right there?”

"We didn't give up, we ran out of time. I think I got the highest of anyone, but I was fighting one of those real bastard Snake Samurai when they announced the end of the beta test and teleported me back to the Town of Beginnings."

"Whoa, yer kiddin' about that Snake Samurai business, I hope. I hate snakes,” the macho man grumbled, which drew a giggle from Asuna.

Wolfgang had long, scraggly brown hair down his back and an impressive beard of the same color, which gave him an appearance as lupine as his name. According to him, however, he got the name from a famous American steakhouse. If he raised enough money, he was going to open his own on the cow floor below, so it was no wonder that he got along with Agil the merchant.

"The meat from the giant snakes on the tenth floor is pretty good, so when you open your restaurant, you should put that on the menu.”

"H-hell no! Steaks come from cows, and that's that! The only thing you’ll find on my menu is perfectly prepared dry-aged beef!”

"Uh, you realize that if you age the beef, it's gonna lose all its durability and disappear, right?” Agil noted dryly. Argo cackled.

If he was limiting himself to beef, I was going to ask if he considered the tauruses in the second-floor labyrinth to be fair game, until a voice from A-Team, farther ahead, cut me off.

“Hey, look at that!”

I stretched up to see down the dark corridor and caught sight of something that was half what I expected and half not.

In the labyrinths before this point, these creepy corridors always had an eerie set of doors at the end leading to the boss chamber. Yet up ahead were not double doors, but a huge staircase as wide as the hallway. And above, there was a huge, gaping black hole through which the stairs rose. For now, there was no sign of any monsters in the corridor or on the staircase.

"Proceed with caution!” I warned, and Hafner responded in the affirmative. A-Team stayed up front, and we watched the sides and rear as we walked forward for half a minute.

A-Team stopped before the staircase, and when I caught up to them, I slipped through to stand at the head of the entire group.

“There are no gaps to the side,” I noted.

At my left, Hafner said, “Meaning we’ll just have to climb up. Our coordinates put us right about in the center of the tower.”

"Hmmm... But will there be another hallway and then the door up there, or will it just be the boss chamber?”

“It wasn't like this in the beta?” Shivata asked from the rear. I turned around to speak.

"Nope. Before there was just another normal set of doors, then the chamber with the golem. But pretty much everything’s been

changed in one way or the other, so there might not be a grand meaning to the addition of this staircase...”

I looked ahead again, staring into the square of darkness at the top of the stairs, but I couldn’t make anything out. No sooner had the thought of throwing a torch up there occurred to me than Argo passed me on the right, carrying a light.

“Guess we just gotta peer inside.”

“R-right… Well, assuming that goes straight into the boss chamber up there, I'm going to go up alone to scout it first."

I turned back to give a formal command to the rest of the group, but Argo intervened, looking deadly serious.

"Hang on. Leave this to me."

“Huh...?”

"This staircase is worrisome. Could be a trap, where the stairs rise up from the floor to seal the exit. If it happens, I'm quick enough to slip out before it closes.”

She kicked the stone step with the toe of her shoe. At that point, I noticed that even the side of the steps had those ancient letters carved into them, which made her suggestion seem all the more likely.

But I'd already forced Argo to do solo reconnaissance on the boss of the catacombs. Just because she came out fine that time didn’t mean everything would go smoothly again.

"...Let's go together, then. I'm not backing down on this."

“Whaaat?”

“Don’t give me that look! I may not be as fast as you, but I'm still a speed type. I'm capable of escaping, too, if the stairs start to move, you know.”

“Sheesh! Fine, fine,” Argo accepted, pouting. I gave the order for the others to watch our backs.

Asuna came forward and whispered, “Be careful." I reassured her that I would be fine and be back soon.

I put my foot on the very bottom step and began to climb the massive staircase carefully, after Argo. The darkness up ahead grew closer, bit by bit.

Eventually the stairs met the ceiling of the hallway and continued onward. It meant that the layer of rock separating the floor where the rest of the group waited and the floor above was extremely thick. The only source of light was Argo's lantern, and although it was brighter than a torch, the thick darkness rebuffed its prying light.

Once we had climbed over fifteen feet from the hole's entrance, I noticed a shift in the temperature. A heavy chill was washing over me from above. That was the air of a boss chamber.

“Argo,” I called. The informant nodded, still looking ahead. Three, four, five steps later, the material under our feet changed.

The hobnails on the soles of my boots hit a hard, smooth surface, producing a sharp ringing. Immediately, there was an eerie vmmm vibration, and a number of lights sprang into being in the distance.

The pale lights, which looked like LED bulbs, cast away the darkness. When I saw what the light revealed, I gasped.

It was vast.

The circular chamber had to be a hundred feet across and fifty feet tall. That meant the entire top portion of the labyrinth tower was taken up by this one boss chamber. The curved walls had to be the very walls of the tower itself, and the ceiling would be the bottom of the sixth floor above.

But that left one question.

“...Wait... there’s no staircase going up,” I muttered, and Argo nodded as she put away the lantern. She cast a thorough glance around the chamber and said nervously，“There’s no sign of a boss, either...”

It was my turn to nod. Until this point, the sequence was always: enter chamber, lights go on, floor boss appears. But even though we had moved from the staircase out onto the floor, there was no polygon block phasing into existence.

The floor and ceiling were flat and smooth, gleaming like black crystal, with fine lines crisscrossing here and there like electric circuits. I crouched down to touch one of the grooves, but nothing happened.

"You don't think... the ALS already beat it, do you...?"

"Not a chance. When we left Mananarena, we confirmed they were still in town. They've prob'ly left by now, but we got a good three-hour lead on 'em," Argo pointed out, inching forward.

“W-wait…”

“I don’t think the boss’ll pop unless we move a bit farther... You wait next to the stairs, Kii-boy," she said, proceeding cautiously.

I peered ahead of her, where thirty feet away there was a spot where the lines on the floor came together in a complex concentric pattern. It looked likely to do something, but that only made me more nervous. Argo knew it, too, though. I just had to stand here and watch her.

The information broker glided slowly, smoothly over the black surface, lit by the pale bulbs and, after a deep breath, stepped into the circle.

One... two... three...

Between the fourth and fifth second, a number of things happened at once.

The lines on the floor glowed, and an instantaneous, fierce vibration rumbled the entire room. I shouted Argo's name, but she was already preparing to leap away from the spot.

If she attempted the same thing a hundred times, she would have succeeded at evading ninety-nine of those times.

But in Aincrad, all outcomes were the result of system calculations that only appeared to be random. If the system decided it would be so, the player's will could not override that outcome.

The momentary vibration threw Argo off-balance, and she toppled into the circle.

The next moment, five square pillars burst up out of the ground in a pattern around her.

There were three long pillars. One shorter pillar. And one shorter still. The pattern... the layout.

They weren’t just pillars. They were fingers. It was a giant hand.

"Argooo!!" I screamed, racing forward. She tried to stand up to escape the fingers, but a tumble in this world wasn't just a lack of

balance, but a system-recognized negative status. She would be under a brief stun effect after falling and couldn’t move until it wore off.

The black fingers, covered in glowing blue lines, started to close around the girl. I crouched, ready to pounce between them and rescue her…

“Stay back, Kii-boy!!”

It was a sharp command the likes of which I'd never heard from her. Argo's right hand flashed from her spot sprawled on the floor. Something flew by and grazed my left cheek—the pick she always had equipped at her side. My avatar's legs disobeyed my command and froze for just a brier instant.

With a deep, explosive rumble, the black hand trapping Argo began to stretch upward from the floor.

Up in the air, the five fingers clenched shut, tightly.

Through the cracks in the pitch-black fist, I heard a faint bursting sound and witnessed a glittering cloud of blue particles.

If I hadn't tasted that same fear in the catacombs two days earlier, I might have been truly too late this time.

When I had seen the one cloaked man holding the Chivalric Rapier +5, I lost all my cool. Just the image of her being PKed took over my mind altogether, I simply didn't think to check her HP bar in my party readout, but even after I did, I nearly convinced myself that it was just a delayed reaction from the game system. To my good fortune, her shout drew monsters that forced Morte and his friend to flee—but if I’d maintained my wits, I could have come up with a smarter plan.

I couldn’t make the same mistake this time.

I tore my gaze away from the floating lights in the air and checked the bottommost of the six HP bars on the upper left corner of my vision. It had taken about 10 percent damage, but the bar was still intact. The crushing effect I saw was not Argo herself but her equipment.

It was too early to be relieved, though. Argo's HP was slowly but surely dropping. She needed to be freed from the huge fist as soon as possible.

"Rrrah!”

I drew the Sword of Eventide from over my shoulder and slammed it against the black arm stretching up thirty feet from the floor. The collision produced an earsplitting blast, a shower of sparks, and a nasty vibration running from my wrist to my shoulder. A red damage line ran down the smoky quartz surface, but promptly vanished. The fist above did not open.

I held my sword to my left side to initiate a sword skill, trying to contain my rising panic. The light blue glow flashed back and forth at high speed before my eyes, creating a larger impact than the last.

The two-part Horizontal Arc got a clear reaction from the fist this time. A bellow like thunder erupted above, the arm pulled down toward the floor, and the fist opened.

A small shadow darted forth from the palm hovering twenty-five feet above, hurtling into a spin and landing next to me. It did a backflip away from the scene, and I took distance myself from the massive arm.

As the arm sank down into the floor with a smaller rumble than when it appeared, I heard Argo comment blithely, "Whew! That startled me.”

“That’s what I’m saying," I quipped, but in truth I was relieved. Argo ended up suffering only 15 percent damage, but her trademark hooded cloak was gone, and the leather armor below was in terrible condition. The bursting effect I’d seen was from the cloak.

“I think we should go back—”

"Below," I was going to say, but Argo cut me off.

"Kii-boy, down there!”

"...?!"

The light circuits running along the floor were undergoing a dizzying transformation. The blue lines were gathering around my feet, forming a number of concentric circles...

"Nwaah!"

Argo and I jumped away, immediately before the enormous

black arm burst from the floor again, clenching its fist audibly in the air.

It was a close call, but at least we’d identified one of its patterns. As long as we paid close attention to the lines, we wouldn’t get snagged like that…

“Below，below!!” Argo shouted again.

"...?!"

I looked down to see that the concentric circles were forming again, despite the arm already being in place elsewhere.

“Mwah—!"

Another jump. A second arm erupted, just barely grazing the toe of my boot, and clenched another fistful or air.

“What? There are two?!”

"Most people have two arms, Kii-boy," Argo remarked rather calmly, given that she nearly died less than a minute earlier. “Look at how the thumb is in a different spot. That’s a right and left hand.”

“Oh... yeah, now that you mention it...”

Indeed, the way the two arms were placed, they looked like a giant stretching up through the floor.

That meant the grabbing attacks were done with for now. The down staircase was a good distance away across the chamber, and I started to head for it when I got a bad premonition and looked up. Those blue lines had been forming on the ceiling earlier, just as they had on the floor…

“I knew it!!” I shouted, grabbing Argo by the arm. The danger circles were forming directly overhead, like a targeting reticle.

This time it was not an arm that burst forth through the stone, but an enormous foot. Just behind me, a bare black foot, size 200, stomped onto the floor. The shock wave of the impact nearly took me off my feet, but I just managed to stay upright.

"Kii-boy, if there are two arms, that means..."

“I know!!”

I kept running, watching the ceiling. Sure enough, the lines wound together, forming another target.

“Here it comes!!” I shouted, but the blast drowned it out. The second foot stomped down harder than even General Baran, sub-boss of the second floor, sending more ripples through the floor. This time we were ready for it and leaped over the shock wave safely, then hit the brakes as we turned around.

Near the center of the hundred-foot-wide chamber, the two arms and legs stood like creepy towers. We had evaded the clutch-clutch-stomp-stomp combination, but since we ran toward the wall, we were now fifty feet from the stairs. It was hardly distant if within a safer environment, but in this battle, it was an endless expanse.

For the moment, the lines on the floor and ceiling and the giant limbs were still, so we could either try to sprint for the stairs now or watch carefully for a third arm or leg, or something else entirely.

“Don’t move, Kii-boy.”

“Huh?”

I started to turn toward her, but another "Don't move!" command froze me. I held my breath, wondering what she was talking about, given that the lines weren't moving.

"Look down very slowly, without moving your feet."

"O-okay," I obeyed, looking down at my feet with the bare minimum of facial and eye movement. There was black floor, blue lines, and my leather boots. “I’m looking... And?”

“Look closer. See how your feet and my feet are just barely not touching the blue lines?”

She was right. All four of our feet were touching nothing but flat floor, without intersecting any of the lines. But at its narrowest, there was less than an inch gap between our shoes and the lines, so any move would cause us to step on them.

"...So stepping on the lines causes those target circles to appear and summon the giant hands and feet?" I asked.

“That’s what I think.”

"...And if we move without stepping on the lines, we can get to the stairs without being attacked?”

“That’s what I think.”

Still, it was easier said than done. It would be one thing if the lines were in a lattice pattern, but they flowed and twisted in random arrays, and the spaces were only big enough to hold a single person at their widest, while barely an inch apart at their narrowest. Even carefully tiptoeing along, it would be extremely difficult to return to the staircase without stepping on a single line.

In that case, maybe it would be best to just make a break for it and expect to be attacked... but then again, that kind of desperate thinking is what gets you in trouble...

The floor trembled again. I looked forward in panic, but it wasn't an attack. The four limbs were retracting back into their respective surfaces. Apparently, if none of the lines were broken for long enough, the trap would reset.

Well, we'd just have to sneak our way back to the stairs, I decided, and turned to suggest this to Argo—but the next words to be spoken didn't come from me or her.

“Hey, you all right?!”

It was Hafner, who led the other nine up the stairs into the chamber. Twenty feet pounded the lines, causing four target circles to appear simultaneously on the floor and ceiling.

"Weird, the boss hasn't shown up yet?" Shivata squawked.

I drowned him out by screaming, "Evade! Evade!!"

If I'd had time to be accurate, I would have said that only those who saw the circles of blue light under their feet needed to evade, but it was all too sudden.

Point-three seconds after that, the raid members showed admirable reflexes in leaping back. But as the ten members had been bunched close together, Shivata and Lowbacca collided and fell in the process. And due to some cruel law of the universe, Lowbacca was one of the four who had stepped on the lines first; a target circle appeared like a menacing eyeball beneath the two where they fell.

Go-go-go-gong! Two enormous arms thrust out of the ground, and two enormous legs fell from the ceiling.

The right hand clenched empty air. The legs slammed fiercely against the stone floor.

And the left hand closed on Shivata and Lowbacca, lifting them high into the air.

“Nwaah?!”

“Whoa!”

Their surprised shouts were cut off by the shutting of the hands fingers. These were two full-grown men, so unlike with tiny Argo, their limbs were sticking out, still in view—but there wasn’t enough room to escape.

Because they were in the raid but not my party, their HP bars were visible in an abbreviated form. Still, the sight of the little horizontal bars bleeding downward only accelerated my haste.

Their damage wasn’t as rapid as Argo’s, thanks to their high defense and HP, but the real trouble was the armor-breaking effect of the grabbing attack. Shivata was the indispensable tank of A-Team, with his extensive experience as a heavy shield user. If he lost his armor, our battle plan would fall apart.

I just need an item that can freeze time for a minute—even thirty seconds! I wished frantically.

Given that we could stop the limb attacks by not stepping on lines, it was possible for this boss fight to go easier than usual, if we executed it properly. It would help us pause the battle, giving us a moment to drink recovery potions.

But I didn’t have time to share that info with the others yet. I wanted to order them to rush back to the stairs, but they weren’t going to run away with Shivata and Lowbacca trapped like that. Liten and Hafner already had their weapons out, preparing to battle the towering arm. Meanwhile, the arm and legs that missed in their attacks were returning to the floor and ceiling.

The instinct to fight wasn't wrong, but normal attacks would not undo the squeezing trap. You needed a sword skill above a certain level of power, I suspected, but with multiple panicked fighters using huge attacks in such a narrow space, it might lead to a collateral damage disaster. But who to command and how?

As my brain ran in overdrive, something hit my eyes like a meteorite. I had crossed glances with a pair of hazel-brown orbs.

Asuna. The only person standing still amid the chaos, waiting for me to say something.

I delivered the shortest order I could to my partner, fifty feet away.

“Parallel on the arm!!”

She nodded without missing a beat and held up her Chivalric Rapier, already drawn. Her sword skill Parallel Sting started with a forceful step forward. It carried her past Liten and Hafner, hitting the black stone arm with two lightning-fast thrusts.

The attack emitted bursts of light, and the same roaring sound as before issued from the ceiling. The fist opened, liberating Shivata and Lowbacca. They fell from thirty feet above, and Liten and Hafner did their best to catch them.

All four of them did lose HP, but the biggest news was that they'd escaped without losing any armor. That was a relief, but the tension wasn’t over. The other limbs had already withdrawn, and new target circles were forming beneath Nezha's feet and over Okotan's and Naijan's heads, closer to the staircase.

“We can’t escape now!” Argo shouted by my side.

I suspected she was right. The lines on the floor were spaced farthest apart toward the wall and bunched up closer as you approached the stairs. It was impossible now for all of us to get to the staircase without stepping on any.

“Everyone, run to the closest wall!!” I shouted at maximum volume, and within a second, everyone was sprinting. The next moment, a hand burst out of the circle next to the stairs, followed by two pounding feet. I sucked in a deep breath for another command.

"Once you're at the wall, stop and make sure you're not stepping on any lines!!"

The rest of the group looked down as they ran. The problem was that the lines were currently reconfiguring, making evasion impossible. Eventually the movement slowed until it was possible to track with the eyes, then slowed more...

“Now!! Avoid the lines and stop!!” I shouted for the third time. Within a small window, everyone else came to a halt.

I held my breath, looking back and forth between the floor and ceiling. No target circles yet. None yet, none yet...

“Ah…” came a quiet voice from nearby.

Nezha, who had been running in my direction, was standing on one foot, waving his arms in an attempt to regain balance. There was a fairly large gap near him, yet for some reason, he was hesitating to put his raised foot down there.

In an instant, I understood why.

He had been assigned a minor FNC (full-dive nonconformity) status by the NerveGear, meaning that he had difficulty with depth perception in this virtual world. That was why he’d given up on close-range combat to become a blacksmith. He didn’t have trouble with walking or running, but the finer skill in judging the distance between his feet and the lines was a bit beyond his grasp.

“Hang on a bit longer!” I called, careful not to step on any lines myself as I approached him. When the chakram thrower leaned over and nearly fell onto the floor, I grabbed his outstretched hand and held him up.

"You're okay, just let your foot down there... Right below, that's it. Good job.”

“S-sorry...”

Nezha's balance was returned. At long last, I could let out a heavy breath of relief.

We had successfully managed to get all twelve people to avoid stepping on the lines, giving us a much-needed pause. We couldn’t let this moment go to waste.

I wasn't going to ask pointless questions about why they'd come up. The scouts had lost HP, and there were huge booming sounds coming from above—of course, they charged up the stairs.

“Everyone who suffered damage, drink a pot while you listen! Those arms and legs belong to the floor boss!” I announced. I could see Hafner’s eyes bulge as he tilted a bottle to his lips. “You

see those blue lines on the floor? Step on them, and the lines on the floor and ceiling start moving around randomly, creating target circles either below or above the person who stepped on it! When the lines stop moving, the arms come up from the floor to grab you, and the feet come down from the ceiling to stomp you!”

"...So you're saying that as long as we keep straddling the lines, the arms and legs won’t attack us?!” Agil shouted from the other side of the chamber, quickly catching on. I couldn’t see his expression a hundred feet away, but the echoes from the enclosed chamber were audible at least.

"That's right! At max, it can attack with two arms and two legs at once! If the arm grabs you, it’ll lift you up about thirty feet and do simultaneous damage to your HP and armor durability! But if you hit it with a sword skill about equal to a two-hit attack from a one-handed sword, it’ll let go of its prey!”

Once I made sure everyone had heard that, I continued, "I don't know how powerful the legs are because we didn’t get stomped yet, but I'm guessing their damage is worse than the arms! And like with General Baran, they create outward shock waves when they stomp, so you might get tripped up if you don’t avoid them!”

Again, the other ten acknowledged understanding. I consulted my memory of the last few minutes for anything else to say, but I couldn't think of anything.

"Well, that's all!!"

A stunned silence fell over the chamber.

A few seconds later, Asuna spoke up from about twenty-five feet away. “So if we stay just like this, the boss won’t attack, but we can’t hit it, either?”

"I... I think so. The silver lining is that if we had a full raid party, there's no way we could get all those people to avoid stepping on lines, but with our smaller number..."

I considered whether we should intentionally step on the lines so we could begin attacking, or if we should attempt to get back to the stairs to go down.

But just at that moment, as if the game system itself refused to allow such a relaxed moment to pass in the boss chamber, the lines in the center of the ceiling, directly over the stairs, began to move on their own. We were all frozen in place, so we could do nothing but watch in horror.

Gong, go-gong! The ceiling began to jut down in a complex shape.

The black surfaces started connecting, lining up along the glowing blue boundaries, forming a symmetrical object. It was a jutting forehead, sunken eye sockets, a square nose, and a horizontal mouth.

The rough, blocky "face," like something from the early days of 3-D game engines, was about ten feet tall from the forehead to the chin. The black sockets suddenly lit up with pale circles of light, and an eerie, complex symbol glowed in the center of the forehead.

As twelve pairs of eyes watched in silence, six HP bars appeared one after the other over the giant head. The first bar looked slightly shorter because of the sword skills we’d used on the arm, but the damage was paltry.

At last, the proper name of the fifth-floor boss appeared in a ghostly white font:

Fuscus the Vacant Colossus.

“The name... is totally different from the beta...” I whispered, aghast.

As if in response, the two pupil-less eyes moved, and the angular mouth opened wide. The blue symbol on the forehead turned an ominous red.

That was bad news, but I didn’t have time to issue a defensive command. It wouldn't have helped, anyway.

The cave-like mouth let out a bellow loud enough to shake the entire labyrinth tower, and every member of the raid wobbled to some degree. Fortunately, no one stepped on any lines, but that was only a temporary relief. The moment the boss had bellowed, a defense-lowering debuff icon appeared under all our HP bars, and the previously still, blue lines burst into movement again.

The unavoidable defense-lowering debuff was bad, but it also broke me out of my shocked paralysis. I roared my orders to the group:

"Spread out and watch the lines carefully! Dodge them whenever possible, and if you step on one, check the floor and ceiling for the circles and get outta the way if you see any! If you can, attack the limbs when they appear!!"

I heard fierce, bold responses from around the chamber. At a much quieter volume, I told the nearby Nezha, "The gaps are bigger along the wall, so it's easier to avoid the lines! When they stop moving, aim your chakram at that symbol on the giants forehead!”

"G-got it!" he responded, and ran to the wall nearby. The dizzying speed of the lines was slowing now. Next, I gave orders to Argo and Asuna.

“I’m going to trigger a line on purpose—get ready to use sword skills!”

“You betcha!”

“All right!”

I watched the lines on the floor closely. We'd gone to the trouble of grouping up tanks in A-Team and attackers in B-Team, but if the boss continued this irregular attack pattern, sticking to formation would only work against us. We'd just have to individually avoid the lines and find chances to counterattack on our own.

The countless lines sliding over the black floor slowed down... slowed down.

“...Here we go!” I shouted, stepping intentionally on one with my right foot. The lines reacted like a living creature, forming a target circle around my foot. Once it fixed into place, I leaped out of the way.

A black arm passed right before my eyes, tearing through the air. Asuna, Argo and I closed in from three directions.

I raised my new sword to deliver the Vertical Arc two-part skill, ensuring I wouldn't hit either of my companions. Asuna

did another Parallel Sting, and Argo executed a three-part attack with the claw on her right hand.

Enveloped by a tricolor blast of light, the giant black arm flinched in pain. The face up on the ceiling roared in anger, and I noticed that the first HP bar was visibly lower than before.

The injured arm sank into the floor, and the lines repeated their dizzying dance. While I waited to try the same strategy again, I checked on the “defense down” icon from earlier, but it wasn’t blinking yet. The effect was frustratingly long-lived.

I sensed movement on the ceiling and looked up to see the boss's mouth opening wide. The symbol on its forehead was glowing red. It was going to roar again—and would certainly cause a different debuff this time. I tensed, realizing it was pointless anyway.

But just before the boss could bellow, a little silver light shot across the room.

It was Nezha's chakram, whirling softly as it flew. It struck the boss's forehead with pinpoint accuracy, and the symbol returned from red to blue. The giant face shrank back, shutting its eyes and mouth and retracting into the ceiling a bit. Meanwhile, the rotating chakram made a hard turn back toward the direction from which it had been thrown.

So far, everything about the boss had been changed from the beta—except for the weak point on its forehead. Just being able to cancel out the debuff attack was huge on its own. I resumed watching the lines on the floor and held out a thumbs-up in Nezha's direction.

The lines stopped. This time the target circle appeared on the ceiling, but the idea was the same. I avoided the golem leg plunging down from above, and the three of us hit it with sword skills at the same time.

As the foot rose up into the ceiling again, I heard Hafner's voice from across the chamber calling out, “Affirmative! We’ll try attacking next!”

Agil and Okotan chimed in:

“We will, too!”

“And us over here!”

I scanned the room and took note of the different groups: Hafner, Shivata, and Liten were on the north side of the stairs; Agil and Wolfgang were on the east side; and Okoton, Lowbacca, and Naijan to the south.

Heartened by the quick reactions of my fellow elites, I shouted as loud as I could: "I'll leave it to you!! Give it hell!!”

But even then, I was resigned to a grab or a stomp or two as they got used to the process.

Step on the line when it stopped, evade the onrushing limb, then hit it with sword skills. When the boss started its debuff roar, Nezha would cancel it with the chakram. Our hastily assembled raid party carried out the pattern admirably and was executing it safely by the third attempt. With both arms and legs being hit by simultaneous sword skills, the damage inflicted was hefty, and it took us less than ten minutes to wipe out the first HP bar, then the second, then the third.

Our plan prior to the battle was to pull back when the boss switched to a new HP bar, in case the attack patterns changed, but even into the fourth bar, more than halfway through, there was no alteration. It was unlikely to stay that way until the end, but we could probably get through one more before the shift.

Just as I was executing another Vertical Arc (having lost count of how many times I'd done it already) I heard Nezha shout with panic.

“Kirito! The wall!!”

I spun around. The blue lines from the floor and ceiling were stretching out onto the previously flat, plain walls. The two sides moved toward each other like some kind of prehistoric creature, filling in the blank space.

Like the bars of a cell.

“Retreat down the stairs! A-Team first, then B-Team!” I ordered spontaneously. If we left the boss chamber and it lost its aggro state, all the HP we'd worked to reduce would heal very quickly,

but it was dangerous to go too deep when you didn't know what was ahead. We only needed one person to see the new attack patterns for himself, and I would serve that role.

“But—!” Hafner protested, and Shivata tugged silently on his cloak. The heavy warrior gave in reluctantly and ran for the stairs in the center of the room.

SAO was a cruel, cold game of death, but there were certain ways in which it maintained a minimum of fair play.

One was that there was always an escape route from a boss chamber. In most of the MMOs I'd played before this, the arena was inescapable once the boss fight started, but SAO was different. The water battle against the hippocampus on the fourth floor did have closing doors while the submerging attack was active, but it was still easily openable from outside.

So I believed that the fifth floor would naturally hold true to that pattern.

“Kirito!” Asuna shrieked, pointing to the ceiling.

I looked up to see that the giant face, which had been stuck to the ceiling since it appeared, was now gone. The three HP bars were still there, so we hadn’t defeated it yet; the lines on the floor, ceiling, and now walls were still moving restlessly.

So where did the face go?

I looked all over the vast ceiling, feeling a sense of eerie foreboding stealing over me.

Then I heard Liten’s helmet-filtered metallic voice cry out, “No, Shiba!!”

My eyes were sucked right toward the direction of the stairs.

In the center of the room, where the staircase had been just seconds before, the boss's face was bulging from the ground, and sunk up to his waist inside of the gigantic mouth was Shivata.

But why—why would it be there? Where did the staircase go?!

I was frozen in place, my breath held, when Hafner turned to me in the process of pulling Shivata from the boss’s mouth.

“The stairs... turned into its mouth!!” he shouted. It took a brief moment for understanding to pierce my brain.

The boss's face disappeared from the ceiling and appeared in the floor. That was fine. But if the down staircase, our only means out of the chamber, turned into the boss's mouth, then nobody could escape the chamber.

No—more important now was rescuing Shivata. His heavy armor was bleeding red damage effects from the boss’s black teeth, each one as big around as Mananarena's massive roll cakes. He hadn't lost any HP yet, but it was easy to imagine that if his armor broke，he'd suffer fatal damage on the spot.

“Dammit, not again!” Shivata hissed as he tried to pry open the boss’s mouth—he’d already suffered the clutching attack earlier. Liten was helping him, but the enormous jaw was not opening in the least. On the other side of the face, Agil was repeatedly slamming his double-handed ax against the weak point on its forehead, but unlike when a single chakram strike could knock it back on the ceiling, it was easily repelling the heavy blade now.

Perhaps, like with the arms and legs, sword skills were necessary to affect it, but given that Shivata was trapped in its mouth now, he was hesitant to attempt them.

I wanted to rush over and help, but the lines were still moving on the floor. Hafner and Liten were too busy with Shivata to bother avoiding the lines, so if necessary, me, Asuna, and Argo would need to stomp on them to draw the limb attacks away.

“Damn... what’s the deal with this boss and all the appearing and disappearing?!” I growled under my breath.

Nearby, Asuna rasped, “So that’s what they meant by Vacant Colossus..."

She had figured something out about the boss’s name. I glanced over at her, and she continued, “Vacant meaning empty, and colossus meaning giant statue... I think it's referring to the entire chamber. This room is the boss of the fifth floor."

"...!!"

I was speechless. I looked out at the entire room, the floor, ceiling, and walls writhing with organic glowing lines.

If Asuna was correct, the twelve of us were trapped inside the empty interior of Fuscus the Colossus. If the whole space was part of the boss's body, then of course it could produce arms and legs wherever it wanted or change the stairs into a mouth.

“I don’t care if it’s a magical golem, this is crazy!” I wailed.

Meanwhile, Shivata screamed, “It’s no good! I can’t get loose!”

Hafner and Liten tried to offer encouragement, but there was fear in their voices as well.

“Don’t give up, Shivata!!”

"Were going to save you now, Shiba!!"

"It's no use... my armor's going to break! Licchan, let go of its mouth!" Shivata cried, a remarkable act of willpower. But Liten only shook her head.

“No!! I'm... I'm going to save you!!”

That was right. We couldn't give up now. Shivata was nearly at full HP still, so even if he got hit by some sword skill damage, it wouldn’t kill him outright.

My mind was made up. “Agil! Attack the forehead sigil with a sword skill!” I ordered.

But the burly fellows bald head shook back and forth.

“I can't... there’s no sigil anymore!!”

“Wha...?”

My mind was shocked into a blank state yet again, until the metal screech of Shivata's armor being damaged broke through it.

If he died here, the other members would be petrified, and we’d be reduced to running around from Fuscus's unfair attacks helplessly. And since the stairs were gone, there was no escape anymore. The entire raid party could be wiped out.

Is this it?

My unsteady eyes traveled over to lock on to the profile of Asuna's pale, frightened face.

The same face I'd been looking at on the spiral staircase up to this floor, when I promised that I would protect her until she didn’t need me anymore.

Perhaps I never had the right to make such a promise in the first place. From the moment I abandoned my only friend in this

game of death, right at its start, my path had been set in stone. I was meant to wander its wastes alone, without a goal.

Was this my punishment, meted out by a digital god? My just desserts for not only seeking a partner to protect, but also leading a group into battle against a boss...?

At my feet, the blue lines that served as Fuscus's nerves slowed their movement.

In the distance, Shivata's armor cracked, spilling bright red damage effects.

The Sword of Eventide suddenly went heavy in my right hand.

Right at the moment of despair, when every player present might have thought all was lost—

“I won’t let you... kill Shibaaaaaaa!!” Liten roared ferociously, and launched into a totally unexpected plan.

The steel-covered heavy warrior jumped onto Fuscus's square jaw and thrust herself without hesitation into the mouth with Shivata inside. His Iron Mail burst into a cloud of little blue shards. The lines of teeth plunged cruelly toward the swordsman's torso, but when they hit Liten's steel plate, they crunched, sending up sparks and stopping still again.

“Wha—! Licchan, why would you do that?!” Shivata demanded, grabbing his partner’s shoulder.

As she pushed against the golem's mouth with both hands, she said, “B-because I’m a tank! It’s my job to protect others!!”

Fifty feet away, those words struck my numbed brain like a hammer.

Aside from Argo and Nezha, Liten was the last member to join the raid party, and she was fulfilling her role more bravely and admirably than anyone. I wasn't even directly exposed to danger, and I was ready to give up.

Liten's job was to protect.

My job now was to think.

Think. Think until every last brain cell burns into ash.

Fuscus's weak point... Where did the forehead symbol go? It couldn't have just vanished. If he was a golem, then there had

to be a symbol or letter carved somewhere on his body, as the Hebrew legend suggested.

Fuscus's face vanished from the ceiling and appeared in the floor. That meant that most likely, the symbol had moved from its forehead to some other location. Somewhere on the floor, walls, or ceiling? No, there was a place more likely than those.

I squeezed my weapons handle and shouted toward the group at the center of the chamber, "Do whatever you can to avoid the lines, guys! If you can’t help it, then climb up on the boss’s face!”

They looked toward me in surprise, then nodded. Hafner, Naijan, and Okotan, all heavily armored, clambered onto the boss's cheeks and forehead, while Agil, Wolfgang, and Lowbacca spread apart to focus on the floor.

Next, I issued commands to my companions nearby.

“Asuna, Argo, Nezha! Step on the lines to bring out the arms and legs! That symbol has to be on one of them! If you find it, we’ll all attack!”

“Got it!”

“You bet!”

“I’ll try!”

All three of them crouched in preparation. As the lines slowed down, they seemed to react briefly as they crossed beneath each foot. There was no need to avoid them this time, but the evasion would be easier if the target circle appeared in front. I rebalanced my feet and, the instant the lines stopped, used my left leg to step on the one directly in front of me.

Immediately the blue lines swirled into a concentric pattern beneath my boot. I leaped back.

It was Fuscus's left arm that shot up toward me, his right arm at Argo, his left leg at Asuna, and his right leg at Nezha, all at about the same moment.

I swung around the arm, searching frantically, but there was no symbol. I didn’t hear any of the others shout about it. If I was wrong about this, we were going to lose both Shivata and Liten.

It had to be there. It had to... it had to!

“I found iiiiit!”

The panicked, lilting scream came from Nezha, twenty feet away near the wall. I spun to see the chakram user pointing at the back of the left leg's blocky knee. But he had been so focused on looking for the symbol that he wasn't able to evade the shock wave after the stomp—he had toppled to the floor and couldn’t get up.

The attack finished, the leg began rumbling back up toward the ceiling. The back of the knee was twelve feet off the ground— about as high as I could reach, but I had no other choice.

“You’re not getting away!” I shouted, racing toward it. I held out my sword as I ran, preparing Sonic Leap, the longest-distance jumping sword skill at my disposal...

“Duck, Kii-boy!!” came a shout from right behind me, and I instinctually crouched.

The next moment, something slammed onto my right shoulder. I just barely managed to stay on my feet, looking up to see the leaping silhouette that had just used me as a launching pad. Even with every last point put into agility, her air was nothing short of stunning.

When Argo the Rat hit the peak of her jump, the claw on her right hand glowed purple. The system acceleration sped her up, tiny body flipping as it hurtled forward like a cannonball. If I recalled correctly, that was the claw-type charging skill, Acute Vault.

At odds with Argo's epithet, she shot forward with carnivorous, feline ferocity, digging deep into the back of the left knee. When three diagonal damage lines covered the blue symbol, I heard a deep roar like subwoofer feedback from the rear.

I turned around, boot soles sliding, to see Fuscus's face protruding from the floor, mouth agape in a howl. Shivata and Liten popped right out of the mouth, pushed by the sheer pressure of the sound, and fell to the ground together.

Liten's plate armor had ugly-looking damage spots on it, but hadn’t broken entirely. As long as it didn't fall apart, it could be repaired.

Keep going!

Fuscus's face sank into the ground, mouth still wide, and disappeared. Like before, the descending stairs were left behind.

After a brief pause, the players present raised a cheer in unison. Hafner leaped onto Shivata with joy and hauled him up onto his feet, while Okotan extended a hand to pull Liten up.

I was relieved that we had at least avoided the worst-case scenario, but the fight was still far from over. I looked around cautiously and spotted Fuscus's face in the center of the ceiling. Its circular lighted eyes blinked, while its mouth opened into a diamond and boomed with an eerie vwo, vwo, vwo laugh. The symbol was back on its forehead, but there was no telling when it would vanish again.

“Guys! It’s too early to celebrate!” I shouted, brandishing my sword. "Let's keep fighting now that we know the change in its pattern! Shivata, I want you to go down the stairs and recover HP!"

Without his Iron Mail, it was too dangerous for Shivata to continue fighting, I thought—but the veteran front-runner already had his equipment mannequin open. He shouted，“Sorry, but I’m gonna ignore that order! I'm not walking down those steps until we beat this boss!!”

“But your armor—!”

"I have a replacement set! I can still fight!”

Just as he said, his shirt was promptly covered by a fresh set of heavy armor. It looked a bit weaker than the Iron Mail he'd just lost, but there was enough defense there to do the job.

"...All right! Just don't push it!" I called out. Shivata gave me a thumbs-up, potion in his mouth. Up on the ceiling, Fuscus mocked our newfound determination again. The glowing lines resumed moving.

From that point on, we managed not to stumble into any major injuries, though we didn't exactly break it down into perfectly stable patterns. The big trouble was still when the boss's face moved to the floor; nobody got gobbled up like that again, but because the position of the symbol shifted around to different limbs,

there were a few times we failed to prevent the debuff voice attack in time. In addition to lowered defense, the debuffs caused a variety of random effects like reduced vision, reduced hearing, reduced balance, and slipping damage, and those suffering sensory effects couldn’t always avoid the grabbing and stomping attacks.

But with admirable coordination, our impromptu raid managed to free the trapped members or carry the stomped ones to the wall for healing. After nearly thirty minutes, we had taken down the fourth and fifth HP bars, and at 8:05 pm, about an hour after the battle started, we reached the sixth and final bar.

“Vwohhhhh!!”

The face in the ceiling roared at maximum volume and the eye rings turned a deep red. “It’s gonna change patterns again! If you’re short on potions, say the word!” I shouted.

"I'm in a bit of trouble!" "Me, too!" shouted Hafner and Wolfgang, so I pulled two small bags containing six potions each out of my inventory and handed them over. Meanwhile, the blue lines crisscrossing the entire chamber were moving in an entirely new pattern.

The floor lines shrank around the staircase in the center, then returned toward the outer walls. As they reached the walls, they climbed up vertically, gathering around the face in the middle of the ceiling.

The lines that had harassed us all battle long disappeared, leaving only blank black floor behind. All twelve of us tensed nervously.

The blue light writhed wildly around Fuscus's face like a mane, and he dipped downward. The lines gathered into four thick bundles, target circles forming at the end of each one. The players stuck beneath them darted away, but the arms and legs that appeared were slower than before. This time, they continued growing, producing elbows and knees, eventually shoulders and hips, then a blocky torso…

"Vwooooaaaa!!"

Fuscus the Vacant Colossus, boss of the fifth floor, separated

from the ceiling as a proper humanoid golem at last, roaring even louder than before.

“Retreaaat!!”

I didn’t even need to give the order. Everyone was sprinting to the south side of the chamber. A moment later, Fuscus landed on the floor with a deafening crash.

The blue lines covered the surface of the thirty-foot-plus giant's body. Starting from the face, they quickly turned from blue to an angry bloodred. In seconds, it was red all the way down to the tips of its feet. Fuscus roared for a third time and raised its arms high, the ends bulging like hammers.

Seeing that my companions had been bowled back by the sight, I called out orders instinctively.

"Now that the boss is human-shaped, we can use our original strategy! A-Team blocks, B-Team attacks! Prioritize hate management!"

“G-got it!” said Hafner, leader of A-Team, and called for his party members. Asuna, Agil's group, and I fanned out on either side so that the heavy fighters were in front of the boss, and the lighter troops were to the sides, weapons bristling.

“Let’s whittle down that last bar!!” I called.

“Yeah!!” came the responses in a fierce wave. The boss responded by stepping forward with a massive, heavy foot.

Shivata and Liten, main tanks of A-Team, came forward, holding their shields up on the left side. With perfectly synchronized motions, they raised their right hands and thrust their left hands forward. The shields glowed silver and rang like temple bells. It was Threatening Roar, a taunting skill that required high Shield skill proficiency.

Depending on the boss’s type, it sometimes had no effect, but fortunately Fuscus was susceptible; he roared and moved faster. Shivata and Liten stood bravely against the enormous golem, which was even bigger than Asterios the Taurus King of the second floor.

"Vwoagh!!" our opponent bellowed, raising his right fist to

nearly scrape the ceiling and slammed it down onto the pair. They stood fast against the blow with their shields.

Even tanks had to perform upkeep on their shields, so the ideal defense was a sidestep move, but they wanted to see if blocking was a viable strategy while they still had the leeway to try. As I watched with equal parts admiration and terror, Shivata's heater shield and Liten’s round shield collided with the giant boulder fist, generating a huge blast and a flash of light.

Sure enough, they were pushed about six feet back, but stayed on their feet without suffering damage. Since that was just a normal attack, they certainly wouldn’t be able to block a special attack with unique effects. But just knowing something could be blocked was a mental boost. Fuscus's right arm was briefly immobilized after the attack, and Hafner tore into it with Cataract, a two-part greatsword skill that knocked down about 3 percent of the last HP bar.

"All right... let's attack!" I ordered Asuna, leaping into motion. I struck the golem's tree trunk-sized left calf with a Vertical Arc. When the pause ended, I yelled, “Switch!” and pulled back. Asuna jumped into my spot, dancing into a high-low Diagonal Sting.

At the right leg, Agil and Wolfgang were swinging their two-handed weapons with abandon, tearing out solid damage. Fuscus faltered with the damage to its legs, roaring. For a moment I was afraid we'd pushed too hard, but thankfully, the golem kept its sights on our tanks.

In the distance along the wall, Nezha was preparing to launch his chakram at the weak point, while Argo darted nimbly across the chamber, leaving healing potions on the floor around A-Team.

"It's finally looking more like a boss fight!" Asuna murmured as she darted back past me.

"Yeah... but it's not going to just end without a struggle. Stay focused!”

“Of course!” she replied, a grin tugging at the corners of her

mouth. There was nothing of the old newbie Asuna from the first two floors left in her. There were many pieces of knowledge left to teach her, but perhaps the moment that she “didn’t need me anymore” was going to come sooner than I expected. The sudden realization caused the breath to catch in my throat.

But that was what I wanted, of course. Only when she left my side and joined a major guild would her ability truly blossom. It was all for the sake of beating this deadly game... Asuna was fighting to get herself back to reality, too.

I clenched the grip of my sword and returned the smile to my partner for now.

“Okay... next time we’ll attack a different spot and find its weak point."

"Sounds good. Maybe it's an Achilles tendon or a pinkie finger," she suggested confidently, whipping her silver rapier back and forth.

As I suspected, Fuscus's attacks expanded to include simple punching attacks, a foot-stomping combo, that aggravating debuff voice, heat lasers from the eyes, and a frenzy mode for his final stage.

I considered a brief retreat every time the pattern changed, but the six members of A-Team, particularly Shivata and Liten, were standing strong through the occasional potion rotation.

When the last HP bar went red, all six of them withstood the golem's furious double-fisted whirlwind attack. Shivata turned to me and yelled, "Kirito! You can have the LA, just make it look good!!”

At that, I had no choice but to put on a show. “All right! I’ll take it, then!!”

I rested the dark-elf Sword of Eventide against my right shoulder and ran with all my might.

It hadn’t been powered up yet, but the sword had a magic boost of +7 to AGI, a remarkable effect for just the fifth floor. I made full use of my speed boost, sprinting at full blast as I drifted toward the wall. When I got there, I leaped onto the curving surface and

kept running, practically parallel with the ground, passing over A-Team on defense, and when I couldn't climb any farther, I jumped as hard as I could.

Fuscus's enormous face was directly in front of me. The red ring eyes shrank, trying to focus on the small leaping human approaching them.

"Vwoaaaaaaah!!"

I did my best to cut through the golem's bellow with a shout of my own.

“This is... the eeeeeeend!!”

[insert illustration]

I held the blade at my left side and activated Horizontal Square, a four-part skill that no other player had yet learned.

The longsword whirred like a coaxial helicopter rotor, striking Fuscus's red forehead symbol with one, two, three, four glowing lines.

The sigil split off of the surface and vanished into a little glow of light.

The ringed eyes began to blink irregularly.

The red lines covering its body flashed brighter. Something like flame erupted outward from the lines—and Fuscus the Vacant Colossus, boss of the fifth floor, exploded.

The Last Attack bonus readout appeared as I landed on the ground again and fell to one knee.

The boss's death effect was more impressive than any of the previous ones, but even after it faded away at last, no one spoke.

Amid the silence, I noticed a change in the texture of the floor. That smooth, crystalline reflection was gone, replaced by the same rough, dark-blue stone that the tower was built from. I reached out, still kneeling, and touched the craggy surface. The entire floor suddenly began to rumble.

At first I was afraid that, like on the second floor, there was another boss to deal with. This time, a new object descended from the ceiling, and to my great relief, it was not an arm, leg, or face, but a spiral stone staircase.

“...It’s over...”

I wasn’t watching, but I guessed the voice belonged to Shivata or Hafner. Like the breaking of floodgates, that comment let loose a storm of cheers from our little raid party.

I wanted to join them more than anything, but an onrush of fatigue threatened to knock me out; it was all I could do to steady myself by jabbing the sword into the floor. As I struggled to use that prop to get to my feet, a pale hand appeared in front of my face.

“Good job, Kirito.”

I clasped it and pulled myself up to a shaky standing position. My partner was grinning next to me, her rapier already put away. We celebrated with a light fist bump.

Behind us, an even louder cheer arose, so I turned to see Shivata lifting Liten up into the air. He was spinning her around, holding her under the arms, as though that full plate armor weighed nothing at all.

"...Looks like they could be the talk of Aincrad by tomorrow," I muttered, but Asuna shook her head.

“Nobody here is going to spread irresponsible rumors. I don’t think even Argo would sell info on them.”

Argo herself was standing not far away, and she managed a brave, “N-nah, never!” Nezha joined in the laughter, and the four of us all shook hands.

“You were an excellent leader, Kirito. Why don’t you try recruiting members to start your own guild?” Nezha suggested innocently. I shook my head in vigorous terror.

“D-don’t even joke about that. Besides, there’s no use inviting you, remember?”

“That’s not true. I’m sure the entire Braves team would love to join your guild, Kirito.”

“Nope, no way. Then Hafner would kick my ass and accuse me of having planned that all along," I protested quietly, glancing over to see that he and Okotan were still enraptured in the glow of victory. I had reluctantly taken on the role of raid leader to prevent a disastrous split between the DKB and ALS, not to lay the sparks of fresh conflict.

In any case, we had beaten the boss without losing a single person, so disaster was averted for now. The only issue was the item in question, I thought with a weary heart...

At that very instant, my body was shot through with an unpleasant shiver, as though a needle of ice had pierced my spine.

I was so involved with the strategy of the boss that I'd forgotten the most important part until this very moment.

The most basic of SAO rules.

When any monster—including bosses—dropped an item, it would appear directly in the players inventory... and even other party members would not know about it.

Meaning that when the group's celebration ended and we got to the post-battle phase, I would ask about who got the guild flag, the ultimate purpose of our entire plan. And if no one raised their hand, it meant that either there was no flag dropped by the fifth-floor boss in the official release of SAO or whoever actually got the flag wasn’t telling anyone—and I would have to discern between the two.

Technically, it was possible for all of us to set our menus to visible so that everyone's gains could be examined. But the contents of one's inventory was the most crucial of personal information in SAO, and even bossy guild leaders like Lind and Kibaou would not dare conduct forced inspections of their members' items.

I briefly considered sorting the item lists to have the newest items at the top, but I discarded that one as well. The sort feature worked only on the main inventory window, like a root folder in a file-based OS. It didn’t work on the subfolders—if the flag had been moved to a container or sack within the inventory, it wouldn't show. I'd have to inspect all those containers, and if it was within a multilayered sub-storage, like a sack inside a box inside a sack inside a box, not only would the process take forever, but it would be easy to miss.

I should have noticed the issue before we started the fight and talked it over.

If we had established a protocol wherein nobody opened their window after the boss was defeated, and we then checked just our main inventory screens one by one, nobody would even attempt to hide the item.

So what should be done? Did I raise the issue now and get permission to check everyone's stuff? Or did I put my hopes on the probability that someone would materialize the flag and drop it out in the open, preventing my fears from coming true in the first place?

“What’s wrong, Kirito? Does your tummy hurt?” Asuna asked, noticing my unnatural state.

"What am I, a little kid?" I wanted to snap, but I wasn't in the mood for jokes. I looked at Asuna, Argo, and Nezha in turn and asked, “Um... did the guild flag drop for any of you?”

All three of them shook their heads. Asuna gave me a questioning look, so I shook mine in return. "Nope, nothing for me..."

“Ahh. So it must be someone over there.”

It was then that Asuna and Argo realized my concern. The two girls grimaced and muttered, "Oh, right..." and "Dang, how careless I was..." That got Nezha's attention.

But the chakram thrower only grinned and said quietly, “It’ll be fine. We all worked as one to win this fight. I'm sure they'll come forth.”

"...Yeah, I'm sure..." I replied, then turned and steeled myself.

The spiral staircase touched the floor about ten feet away from the descending stairs. It met the stone seamlessly, as though it had always been in that exact spot.

As I approached, Shivata lowered Liten at last and turned to me, beaming. "Hey, we did it!" he cheered, raising his hand. I tried to put on the most natural smile I could summon as I slapped his palm.

The sound brought the other members over, and I addressed the entire group.

"First, congratulations, everyone... and thank you. We managed to beat the boss, and it was thanks to your incredible effort.

Lots of stuff didn't go according to plan—I mean, our reconnaissance run ended up being the final attempt—but you all did admirably against undoubtedly the toughest boss yet."

I paused, and Hafner, hands on hips, filled the silence—but not with what I expected.

“Given my position, I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but… maybe we were able to defeat a gimmicky boss like this without casualties because we only had a dozen members. If it was a full raid of forty-eight, I feel like it’d be impossible for every last one to avoid those floor lines.”

As if noticing what he was just saying, he then looked at the ALS's halberdier. "Uh... Oko, do you think the ALS was planning to attempt the boss with just their core members because they knew how to tackle it properly?"

Okotan lifted his hands in a shrug and said, "Nope, I think that was a total coincidence. Plus—and this is totally off the record—I don't think the ALS's three main parties could have done this without losing anyone. We don't give members any orders based on build, so we don't have any pure tanks in that group. It's too tough a role for too little experience gain. Scouting Liten was a big step toward fixing our tank situation... I knew she would be a bearer—I mean, a bear for us.”

“I am not a bear, Oko!” the maiden in love protested from inside her damaged plate armor. Okotan smiled in mild panic at the unintended insult, but Shivata, Hafner, and Agil's team roared with laughter.

With the conversation at a lull, Shivata opened his window and looked at it, then at me. "It's already eight thirty. The ALS could be showing up any moment now. Have you thought about how we’re going to return, Kirito?”

I was taken aback; I'd been occupied with a different question.

"Uh... yeah, right. We might run into the ALS if we go back down the tower, so I think we should go up to the town of the sixth floor and teleport back to Karluin through the gate. We went to the trouble of beating the boss; you all want to see the next floor，right?”

“You bet I do! I'm so excited!” Hafner bubbled. The group laughed again, but I cut them off by raising my hand.

“Like Shivata just said, we don’t have much time. I’d like to rush up to the next floor, but before that, there's something very important to take care of."

The group grew serious again with my expression and tone of voice. I motioned Asuna forward, then looked at each of the raid members in turn: Hafner, Shivata, Liten, Okotan, Agil, Wolfgang, Lowbacca, Naijan, Asuna, Argo, and Nezha.

"The purpose of this fight was to get the guild flag from Fuscus. I want whoever got the flag to speak up now.”

“Oh, right, that was the point. I totally forgot,” said Agil. He rubbed his head and held his empty hands out, indicating that it wasn’t him. His companions shrugged or shook their heads, and the pairs of ALS and DKB members gave similar reactions. Of course, neither Asuna, Argo, nor Nezha spoke up, either.

After five seconds of silence, Wolfgang said hesitantly, "It's not… you, Kirito?”

“Nope… didn’t drop for me.”

“So that means the fifth-floor boss in the official game didn’t have this flag after all?” the wolfman asked in surprise, stroking his beard. Meanwhile, the even hairier Lowbacca raised his arms over his head in disbelief.

"Well, what a bunch of nonsense over nothing! What was all that hard work even... for...?"

His words slowed and faded out as he came to a realization. At the same time, the expressions wore off of everyone else's faces.

The possibility that someone had the guild flag and wasn't announcing it to the group mercilessly shredded the post-victory glow hanging in the air.

The companions who had fought the boss with one heart and one mind now looked at one another in suspicion. It was stoking all my worst fears.

It would be so easy to simply declare, "The fifth-floor boss did not drop any flags,” and head upward.

But that only put off the problem at hand. In fact, I would be abandoning my duty.

Because I already had a suspicion about who had earned the guild flag and was hiding it from the group.

Of course, I couldn't present undeniable evidence, but if I framed the discussion just right, I might be able to put pressure on the guilty party. Still, if they insisted innocence, I could not force an inspection of their inventory or threaten with my naked blade. I had to produce a willing confession, not create a stalemate.

But how could I fashion that outcome?

I'd never attempted to understand the minds of others before this; I only pushed them further away from me. Even with my family in the real world, the people whose faces I saw every day, I often found myself wondering what they were thinking, what kind of people they truly were. The feeling of not knowing who another person really was drained the feeling from my real life, and at times filled me with an inexpressible emptiness.

I found my escape from real life in online games starting in elementary school because the idea of communication through an avatar seemed very natural to me. The 3-D avatar and the real human manipulating it were in separate realms, completely isolated from each other. That way I didn't have to worry about who anyone else was.

That was why Sword Art Online, the world's first VRMMORPG, appealed to me so much. My application to the beta test and eventual imprisonment in this virtual world were essentially inevitable.

Bump.

But from the day the log-out button disappeared and my avatar turned into my own body, I tried to distance myself from people again. I abandoned Klein, my very first friend, and was nearly killed by Kopel, my very first collaborator—but the root of the problem was with me, for being afraid of getting close to others.

Once this world became my second reality, I tried to have zero connection to anyone else, just like before. The player was always a player; even with my life on the line, I would continue to role-play under a fictional name. Maintaining that mind-set allowed me to engage in a minimum of communication with other people.

I might be able to pressure whoever was hiding the guild flag with logic, but I could not convince them in the truest sense of the word...

I let out my breath, started to lower my head.

But my attention was drawn by a small but bright light in the right corner of my vision.

The source of the light was a pair of hazel-brown eyes, staring straight at me. Not pleading, not urging—just watching, silently.

Asuna.

Since the start of this game, I had undoubtedly spent more time with her than anyone else, yet she remained an enigma to me. I wasn’t honestly sure why she kept working with me. There were so few times I felt I truly understood exactly what she was thinking, I could count them on my fingers.

But for whatever reason, I had never felt that sensation—that suspicious "Who are you really?" question—about her, not even once. She always existed in a neutral state at my side, angry, sulking, laughing.

She wasn't acting out a temporary disguise of herself here. Whether her body was a digital avatar or not, she was herself. Asuna could be more natural with herself than anyone, not because she was a newcomer to MMOs, but because she possessed a firm sense of self.

When I first found her in the labyrinth tower, she was empty eyed and nearly suicidal in her abandon. Now she had found a reason to fight, gained knowledge and skill, and had worked her way to being one of the very best players in the game.

Could I change like that, too?

I returned her glance and resumed facing the group.

My upright stance bent at the waist, and my head lowered into a deep bow.

The vast chamber echoed with startled murmurs. I searched for the right words—not as a speech, but my own true thoughts.

"First, I need to apologize to you all. I should have started discussing how to handle the guild flag first, before we started the fight. We needed to know what to do if the flag dropped and how to confirm if it didn’t. It was my mistake that we didn’t do that until now. And that has caused mistrust among the group..."

I straightened up at last, looking right at the faces of the other eleven.

“But I don’t want the ALS and DKB to fight over the flag… I want both guilds to work together and help us expand our frontier in the game. That's why I summoned you all here to take part in this boss raid. It was what I believed before the fight, and it's still what I believe, now that we've won."

I paused, and silently called upon the late knight.

Diavel, what would you have done here? I can't be your successor. I don't have the nobility, the leadership that you represented. But the desperate way you went after the Last Attack, the honesty with which you asked your former rival to carry things on—I admire those qualities.

Yes, I had to do everything I could before giving up was an option, just like Diavel did against the first boss. Just like the Legend Braves did against the second boss.

I drew my right foot back to an even position with the left. Straightened my spine, all my fingers, and held my hands at my sides.

From my position standing at attention, I looked directly at a single player, then bent at the waist, lowering my head as far as I could, until I saw nothing but the blocky stone floor.

"...There is no longer any way to determine who got the guild flag using system tools. So I’m begging you. I don’t want you to give it to me... I want you to let the group determine its use. For the sake of the frontline team... For the sake of all those players waiting on the lower floors... And for the day when someone finally beats this game.”

Silence filled the chamber.

The murmurs were gone, as were the clearing of throats, the rustling of equipment, and even breathing.
The silence was so complete that it almost seemed as if the auditory input had been cut off somehow.

A clanking metal footstep broke that illusion.

The footsteps, somewhere between the dull thud of heavy armor and the light pad of leather armor, approached with purpose and stopped right in front of me. From above my bowed head came a calm voice.

“Please straighten up, Kirito.”

"..."

I slowly looked up to see the oldest member of the raid... the head scout of the ALS, Okotan.

I took his outstretched hand and straightened my back. This time, it was his turn to stiffen formally and bow.

“Kirito, my companions, I am very sorry. I was the one who failed to announce that I had earned the guild flag.”

No sooner had his confession and apology ended than a muffled voice came from the back. "Oko...! But why—?!”

The figure stepped forward, raising the visor of the armet helm to continue in a sweet, clear voice, "Remember what you said? That the entire frontline group needed to stick together, that our two guilds shouldn’t be fighting… Why would you do this?!”

When the tear-streaked plea was over, Okotan turned and bowed again to his guildmate. "I'm sorry, Liten. I'm afraid I've betrayed your trust."

He turned back to me and opened his window. After a few taps at his inventory—it seemed to have been hidden in a subfolder, as I suspected—he materialized an item.

With a spray of little dots of light, a ten-foot-long spear appeared, even longer than the halberd slung over the man’s back. In fact, while the end was pointed, it was not a spear. A pure white triangular banner was attached to the upper end, wrapped gently around the mirrored silver handle.

"Ohhh," someone murmured with awe.

I had never seen it before, either, but it was clear at a glance that this was a very special item. Fine detail adorned the tip and the butt of the slender shaft. The border of the banner and the lustrous material were elegant and filigreed. The sheer presence of the item cast it in a different light altogether from the other items of the lowest floors of Aincrad.

Okotan hefted up the guild flag, witnessed in person at last, and asked gently, “Kirito, you looked directly at me. Could you tell me how you knew I was the one?”

"Ah... yes." I took my eyes off the flag and looked the halberdier in the face. "Okotan... were you a heavy FPS player before you joined this game?”

He was taken aback by the way I turned the tables back on him, then nodded. "Yes... for a while, I played shooters more than MMOs.”

My suspicions confirmed, I started to explain the detail in his words that stuck in the back of my mind.

“Well, I only tried them a bit... but you know that type of team battle in shooters called CTF: capture the flag. The one where two teams fight over a single flag.”

“Right,” said Shivata, who clearly had no idea where I was going with this. I pressed on.

"In that mode, the player who has the flag in his possession is called the flag carrier or flag bearer—bearer for short. And earlier, you said, 'Liten would be a bearer—no, a bear for us.' You changed the word on the fly, but I figured you wouldn’t have thought to use that word at all unless the flag had dropped into your inventory and was already on your mind."

When I said it aloud, it sounded less like a reasoned, educated guess and more like a nonsensical accusation, but Okotan only nodded his head slowly.

"Ah, I see... I suppose that's what I get for attempting something I'm not used to." He looked down at the beautiful flagpole in his hands and smirked bitterly, “Maybe I’m not in a position to say this, but... Kirito, Liten, everyone... I want you to believe me. I did not participate in this raid for the purpose of stealing the guild flag for myself. I have no connection to the inner circle of the ALS. At first, I wanted nothing more than to protect the relationship of the two guilds... That was my only desire. But...”

Okotan's finely whiskered mouth twisted, and his eyes clenched shut. His hoarse voice echoed through the stone chamber.

"When this flag... the Flag of Valor, dropped into my inventory, and I realized nobody had noticed and that I could hide it if I wanted—the thought entered my mind. The thought that I could use this as a bargaining chip to have the two guilds united into one...”

Hafner's armor clattered faintly, but he bit his lip and maintained silence. Shivata and Liten looked at each other but also said nothing.

When Okotan opened his eyes again, the self-mocking smile returned, and he shook his head. “But that would never happen. If the guild flag appeared in the hands of an ALS member, then the rest of you would know that I had kept it. How could we have a good-faith negotiation like that? It was a stupid dream. Once again, I apologize to all of you for my foolish actions.”

Still holding the flag, Okotan bowed deeply again. Hafner clanked forward a step, his fists clenched.

"Yes, that was a stupid thing you did! So stupid, in fact, that it could have led to open war between our guilds! But... your dream wasn’t stupid at all!!”

Okotan's shoulders twitched. The DKB's subleader took another heavy step forward and, in a slightly quieter tone, continued, "I had a little dream of my own during that battle. If me, Shivata, you, and Liten could fight together so well, being in a party together for the first time, then maybe there was no use to all our bickering... Maybe we shouldn't split into two squabbling guilds, but form our ideal parties. And I'm not gonna give up on that dream. Maybe it won’t lead to our guilds merging... but I'm not going to stop thinking about what-ifs. So... so I forgive you!!"

Hafner's sudden speech paused, and he surveyed the rest of the group. "If any of you still can't forgive Oko and want to see him penalized in some way, raise your hand now!"

Agil spread his hands wide and smirked. "C'mon, Haf, you know that when you put it that way, nobody's going to raise their hand.”

The Bro Squad all nodded agreement, while Asuna, Argo, and Nezha smiled. Okotan's back trembled, his head still lowered toward the ground.

“...Thank... you.”

His voice was halting and raspy, but with the echoing of the stone chamber's floor and walls, everyone heard it loud and clear.


-----------------


And that's chapter 10. Pretty exciting battle.
Now to see if Kirito will bring up the stuff he wanted to bring up in chapter 9.
Really long but didn't take me as long as I thought it would.
Still not sure if I'll do chapter 11 and 12 together tomorrow, depends on how late I come home.

Thanks again!

>Lowbacca
Seriously?

...

Low-baka.