Chapter 3: Black Hole
"GRHAAAAAAAAA"
Sound waves of incredible volume and force reached them from behind. Kirito gradually turned his head around, afraid of the sight he was about to get. A sweat drop rolled down his forehead in fear. Then he met those devil red eyes shining like a laser pointer, with demonic fire instead of a pupil.
"Skull Reaper..."
The skeleton monster didn't wait long and unleashed an attack with the tail by turning its body. The razor-sharp blade darted millimeters above the ground horizontally to their direction, shortening the grass in its wake.
Kirito readied his swords in a cross block stance, taking on the whole tremendous impact and force behind the giant tail. Unexpectedly, he was able to block it unlike the last Skull Reaper. He couldn't block the attacks of the floor boss only by himself, so he and Asuna had to create a new block mechanism with three swords to stop its strikes. This wasn't the Skull Reaper he knew.
He glanced up to the small half transparent bar next to the huge skull which he hadn't noticed until now in the heat of the battle.
Hollow Deadening Reaper
He barely managed to jump before the tail could hit him, threateningly cutting some hair tip away. The boss had two health bars luckily, the Skull Reaper had five! He strengthened the grip on the handle and kicked the grass beneath him. Dashing towards the skull, he charged a skill which left a trail of intense blue light in the air.
Sonic Leap
He penetrated the tough layer of some kind of bone-armor between its eyes with his Elucidator. His sword didn't went further than the tip but stuck there. Kirito put a foot on the monster's head next to his stuck sword and tried to pull it out by shifting his whole weight into his shoulders.
But the sword didn't even budge in the crack, so he had to let go of it and jump back since the monster was about to start new attacks. Another glance to its gauge told him that Sonic Leap did a massive amount of damage. The Health points of the first bar had decreased around a quarter of it.
Philia rushed at the skeleton centipede, her sword grazing the grass while she charged a normal attack, glinting deep red. She stepped through a gap between its sharp legs while Kirito distracted the beast, and slashed upwards to the spine. This strategy they kept up for a while.
"GRHAAAAAAAA"
The centipede growled enraged and seemed to power up when its first bar lost all the points and was left empty. It started to run around at an incredible pace, slashing everything on its way with doubled strength.
Philia was too slow to react so Kirito had to push her off the way and save himself with a side roll as the huge body came at them. They tried to blow one attack each time it passed by, however that didn't seem to do any great damage.
"Philia come here !" Kirito shouted, trying to drown the noise. The girl nodded briefly and dodged another three strikes of various legs before getting to him.
"You have a plan ?"
"Yeah, just follow me"
That was all they could say in the short timespan the centipede gave them. It growled another time and charged headfirst on the two. They responded, Philia darting behind Kirito against the skeleton-centipede head on, both charging their swords and leaving an air-trace of individual light on their way.
The centipede attacked at the one-handed black swordsman with its two huge forearms like a scythe diagonally to meet those in the flesh of its opponent. But Kirito skillfully parried the two scythes with his only sword above his head. The impact coursed from his wrist through his body, making his feet get pushed further into the grassy ground. Then he let himself fall back, both of them stunned for a short while, and let Philia pass by.
"Switch !"
Philia used the moment without wasting a second or movement, and jumped towards the boss' skull horizontally with a stretched leg, which resembled some kind of Karate. She obviously aimed at the sword's grip between it eyes.
Charging energy in her foot, she emitted a blue glow from it while approaching the the skeleton centipede with speed the naked eye couldn't see. Sounds of bones splitting followed the kick. Philia was still in midair with one foot at the bottom of the grip. The crack widened and new traces crossed the whole skull randomly. A low blue shine engulfed the monster before it bursted out in billions of polygons, only thing left being the victory message. Kirito let out a breath he didn't notice he was holding.
Both were too exhausted to talk to they just let themselves fall on the lush grass which was battle-scarred on many spots. They had no idea where they were now since the boss drove them back quite a distance. The jungle wasn't in sight anymore, only wild habited flat area with many bushes and big majestic plants.
Kirito looked at the sky while heaving his chest at a fast pace and supporting his sitting with the hands behind his back. The clouds resembled fluffy cotton-wool and reminded him of his soft bed back at the inn and old log house. He felt the exhaustion and lack of sleep, but forced himself to stay awake. A warm breeze brushed the smaragd grass along with his hair and clothings and made him just grow more tired.
After sitting there some time, the system voice returned and all the tiredness was soon replaced by adrenaline.
Hollow Area Introduction complete.
Introduction ?! So there is more ? Although this boss wasn't that strong as he first thought, it was still a pain in the ass. There was no way he would do something like that voluntarily for the sake of some experience points even if it barely cost an eighth of his health points, it was too tiring.
He let his eyes wander around the place to find something interesting, or rather useful. A small pitch-dark dot in the sky on the horizon behind some mountains could be seen when focused hardly. Half curious and half excited he jumped up and ran to the other sitting person about 20 feet away where the skull of the centipede had been before shattering.
His familiar black coated sword lay there next to the girl with blue hood covering her face. He grabbed the warmed up steel handle and examined the surface of the blade in the reflection of the sun to search it up for any damage. Unfortunately, it had many small scratches at the tip, a long deep one tracing from the tip to almost the handle. He had to repair it as soon as possible but that wasn't possible here.
"Hey"
Philia threw her hood back as she narrowed her eyes seeming to have discovered something behind the frame in front of her.
"You see that too?" She asked, lifting an eyebrow.
"Yeah, let's go there."
Kirito reached out his hand to help her stand up. A smile formed on his lips in excitement and anticipation. He grew to like this place, though it didn't bring any good memories along till now. It was just the feeling of wanting to explore these places from which there wasn't a single map anywhere.
Philia hummed affirmatively and so they took on their long journey to the mysterious dot.
They walked through a valley surrounded by smaragd-green mountains for three hours talking about the most random topics. It seemed like this path was extra made to lead them to the black dot which could be described as mini orb by now,
"How long do you think it's gonna take us ?" Kirito asked, his gaze locked on the orb.
"Maybe another three hours"
"Ugh"
Out of nowhere, Kirito pressed his index finger against her lips and started to look around worily. Philia furrowed her brows and whispered annoyed.
"What is it ?"
Kirito ignored her question and scanned the area with his search skill. He was sure that he heard and sensed something a moment ago. A gentle breeze swept through the small valley and brushed over the grasses creating a soft whisper.
There ! The sound of clinking glasses reappeared somewhere in front of them. The path led upwards and hid everything leading down behind the peak. With light sneaky steps, Kirito walked up to the peak, and let his jaw fell open with widened eyes as the new image assaulted his vision.
Shit !
The path led down straight, everything like it had been on the way here, just one slight difference this time. Tens or hundreds of blue circular lights appeared in the air and made the clang sound from before. When the blue light died out it revealed humanoid lizardmen mobs. Around three meters tall and a Katana sword equipped in their right hands was the only thing he could tell in the distance.
They couldn't turn around now either. As they looked back from where they had come, innumerable amount of those green frames blocked their possible escape route too.
Kirito unsheathed his swords from the scabbards and threw a short glimpse, seeing Philia having readied herself too for the upcoming rumble. With buffing battle cries, they entered the undodgeable aggression areas of the mobs and continued their way.
After 5 hours
Blue polygons burst out from where the last lizardman stood, followed instantly by two figures dropping on to the grass. From what he could remember he never felt that exhausted before in his life. Every vein pulsing like crazy, eyelids heavy and only barely being held open, arms and legs half numb.
The lizardmen were pretty skilled with the Katana they had and were able to execute five-hit combos partly. This area had really many strong monsters, stronger than the Floor seventy-six ones. They were strong and exhausting on the one side, interesting and valuable on the other side. Value of mobs showed the efficiency of farming these specific monsters, and these ones had a really high one.
The small dot which they had come for was really near now, but a mountain covered it from the vision of them since they started fighting. Kirito traced a line in his lying position and opened up the inventory. The stamina potions he had picked materialized in his palm. The content was yellow liquid which to be honest really didn't give the impression of tasting good.
He poured the potion in his mouth, only to spit it out a split second later. His mouth sent out a sour crawling through his entire body and caused him to shrug. His face scrunched up as soon as the liquid hit his tongue, tasting like it contained the sourness of a whole lemon in one zip.
He shook his head vigorously to brush off the very least single bit of the taste. Even if he was a fan of spicy food which a normal person couldn't eat without panting, it was the opposite with sour things. He readied himself mentally for the next sip, and downed the whole potion without giving his body time to react.
Beside the ultimate gross feeling filling up his whole mouth cavity and making every taste bud totally numb, he felt a stream of energy flow through every vein of his, into every limb. It provided him enough strength to fight another impostor Skull Reaper or another hundreds of those lizard creatures.
As soon as the small stamina bar in his vision under his his name reached the end, he stood up and went next to Philia who had her eyes shut. 'She must've been really exhausted' Kirito chuckled silently.
He took the other stamina potion and poured it into a tiny gap between her lips.
"HHAhahahhaha-..." Kirito burst out in laughter when he saw her expression which was almost the same as his actually, but was cut short by an instant slap.
"What was that for ?!" Philia asked, glaring daggers at him. Kirito couldn't restrain himself from giggling as the picture reappeared in his mind.
"Now we can go on" Philia looked into the left top corner and was surprised as she spotted her stamina bar. She decided to let the "prank" slip and went with him to the peak of the mountain which seemed to be the nearest point to the small orb they've seen last time hours ago. The smirk on Kirito's lips didn't vanish for the rest of their little journey.
They stood on the peak of the mountain, staring at their actual destination. The image assaulted their brain and was too much to handle for a second. Kirito let his jaw drop due the unexplainable view in front of them.
The small dot they've traveled for has become a round huge sphere. The pitch-dark sphere seemed to even absorb light itself. Chains hung beneath the first slightly transparent layer of the sphere, and almost enveloped it completely. A yellow substance seemed to flow together from the sides to the bottom of it and was on the verge of dripping, but it didn't. The only thing what made sure that it wasn't a picture floating in the air, were bright flashes on the surface.
Kirito's curiosity excited drastically and the urge of rushing in there was great. But there was no way of getting there...
Just as he thought that, a small tickling permeated his whole right hand. The pattern on this glowed up more and more, and the tickling became a prickling.
Kirito looked around to find a clue what could have provoked this. Around him on the cliff was almost nothing beside the short grass and small bushes. He activated his nearly full maxed search skill.
Everything in his vision turned deep blue, and everything of importance would be displayed golden. Since his search skill was on a very high level, he was able to see things through up to 3 layers of standard house walls. Golden smoke went up from behind a bush.
He poked Philia's shoulder and pointed towards the bush. When they had approached the bush, Kirito pushed it away and went on for the actual cause of the shining pattern on his hand.
A small stone plate was lying there on the ground behind the bush. To their surprise it had the exact same pattern like his hand's one carved into it. As he neared his hand the stone plate, the pattern's glow intensed a lot and soon a millimeter before touching it, the pattern emitted a dazzling light.
As soon as he touched the object, the prickling in his hand ended, rather everything fell numb. His vision went black. The ears didn't receive any sound. His body went through something like a tunnel at a very fast pace, was the only thing he could tell and assured that he wasn't dead.
...
He blinked his eyes open. The figure in front of him was blurry, its face very near to his. It seemed to yell something out loud, but everything his ears could register was an almost entirely dampened sound, which didn't even give away the slightest bit of information.
His body felt several tons heavy, and throbbing pain coursed his body at a continuous rate. 'Pain ?' Normally the Pain absorber would prevent him from getting any pain. His mind was too hazy to clearly think about that right now. Although he forced himself to stay awake, his heavy eyelids didn't allow it and closed his eyes. The split second before the system took over his consciousness he heard a clear cry.
"KIRITO-KUN~ !"
And here ends chapter 3.
I couldn't focus at all anymore because of the goddamn weather. The sun is really escalating here. Sorry for that.
Small Preview:
The feeling of eyes watching every step he took, every move he made, crept up his neck for now over then ten minutes. This person must have had a really high level in hiding if not even his search skill could detect him or her.
"Show yourself! I don't know who you are or why you are following me, but I know you're there!" He shouted into the blind alley, dark shadows thrown onto the cobblestone-pavement and himself by big buildings which gave the impression of breaking in over him.
"Interesting, you were able to notice me"
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