"How many tanks do you think we'll need, Kirito…?"
It was Asuna that broke the deathly silence that had settled upon the players after experiencing the aura of hopelessness resulting from the apparent impossibility of the current boss at hand. Kirito sighed as he replied, "We'll probably need an entire party of tanks, judging from the size of that weapon…"
Kirin added, "Should we also have parties with completed Parry skills too? That weapon is going to be an absolute pain in the ass to handle."
Nautilus nodded. "Agreed. We would also need several parties with pure DPS ability. He looks pretty tanky himself."
"A party of healers too," Yuna interjected.
"That would be our job," Kirin stated. "We're the only ones who don't need items for healing. We could simply use our voices to invoke HP regeneration."
Kirito beamed and slapped Kirin on the back. "I'm counting on your support, Kirin. Yours as well, Yuna."
Yuna blushed slightly and nodded, "Okay."
Kirito was sitting cross-legged on the ground, leaning against the wall, before he put his hands on his knees and pushed up, stretching his legs before standing up. "Alright, let's head back and organize a raiding party. I'm sure you'll need to report to your bosses."
"Boss," Asuna corrected. "I'm technically a boss here too considering that I'm the second-in-command of the Knights of the Blood."
"Yes, yes, Asuna-san," Kirito shrugged. "Sorry, I forgot."
Asuna rolled her eyes as she stood up. "Let's get going. We should be able to clear this floor before the daylight fades."
The quintet was about to exit the safe area when the barrier between the Labyrinth and the safe area rippled, ejecting about twenty to thirty players in full armor. Kirito recognized the emblem of the flag when the player at the front, a red sash adorning his chest, yelled, "Troop, halt!"
The sound that followed could only be described as a gigantic monster having let out a content sigh after devouring a meal, perhaps. All the other armored men collapsed to the ground, clearly exhausted. Kirito broke the silence that settled over his group. "You're from the Aincrad Liberation Force, aren't you?"
"You speak the truth, fellow player," the head player stated as he removed his helmet and tucked it under his armpit. "My name is Corvatz. I am the first commander of the Aincrad Liberation Force, serving directly under Sir Thinker. It may be rude of me to ask you of this but have you good sirs and ma'ams discovered the boss room yet?"
Kirito looked at Asuna to his left and looked at Kirin to his right, wondering if it was a good idea to reveal that they had. Asuna shrugged while Kirin just smiled. He cleared his throat. "Yes, we have. We were about to head back to discuss and plan for the boss raid."
"No need for that, good sir," he replied, his Spanish accent shoving its way through his relatively perfect Japanese. "We of the Aincrad Liberation Force shall defeat this boss alone."
Asuna shook her head. "You can't do that, sir! The boss this time around is not a simple one!"
"So they say for every boss," he replied. "But we have prevailed through them all!"
Kirito rebuked him. "Not today, sir. This boss is not like the other bosses. It's a blue-eyed demon!"
Corvatz raised an eyebrow. "Oh? This might be interesting. Alright, men, get up! We are going on an expedition!"
Immediately, complaints arose. "Aw, come on!"
"Are you serious?"
"You're going to kill us before we get to the boss room to quite possibly actually die!"
Nautilus marched over to Corvatz and stared him in the face. "Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to turn back. The current strength of this boss is like nothing we've ever seen before. A strategy meeting is imperative!"
The aging Spanish man simply shook his head and pushed Nautilus away. "Aren't you simply just going to steal all the glory for yourselves again? Not on my watch! The Aincrad Liberation Force is the main driving force behind the motivations of players holed up on the first floors! We must keep them motivated by clearing a floor ourselves!"
Asuna stretched her hand out and placed it on the man's shoulder. "Sir, we insist that you stand down."
Corvatz shook her off and yelled, "On towards the boss room! To victory!"
The cheer was repeated among the players although much quieter considering that they were clearly more spent than their commander. They got up and left the safe area, heading towards the boss room. Kirito sighed. "Should we tail them?"
"Probably…" Nautilus agreed.
The five were about to follow the fading footsteps of the Aincrad Liberation Force army when a familiar voice yelled, "Hey! What have we here but my most favorite group of friends!"
Whirling around, Kirin saw the lanky frame of a brown-haired bandanna-clad man whose teeth were showing in a winning smile. "Klein-san!"
"Well, well, look who it is!" he said smugly. "Most famous player in Sword Art Online, Ayanami Shiratsuyu! Oh wait, should I have said, 'Kirin' instead?"
"Call me either one…" she sighed, her attitude suddenly muting. "Not like I can garner any more attention than I can already garner."
Klein looked past her and trampled Kirito in a bear hug before snaking his way around him and using his knuckles to roughly scratch at his hair. "How's my lone wolf doing?" He then turned to see Asuna and stopped. "Wait, why are you with the Flash?"
Asuna raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying that it is wrong of me to be partied with Kirito?"
"Uh… No, not at all…" he stammered. He looked warily at his other guild members who all proceeded to be suddenly interested in anything but their guild master.
The silent Yuna piped up, "Excuse me, but we need to split in two."
"Ah, yeah," Asuna agreed. "Klein-san, would you mind going towards the boss room? There's an army from the Aincrad Liberation Force currently attempting to clear the floor alone."
"Let me guess," he interrupted. "You're going to head back to your headquarters and conduct a strategy meeting."
"Spot on."
"Ugh…" he sighed. "Alright, fine. Can't abandon my best friends, eh?"
"Let us go along with them," Nautilus interjected. "If worse comes to worst, it might be possible for us to buy enough time for you to prepare a boss raid team, Lieutenant General."
"Alright," she replied. "I give you permission."
Nautilus nodded and walked over to Klein, holding out his hand. "The name is Nautilus. I am a Lieutenant Colonel within the ranks of the Knights of the Blood. Glad to work with you."
Taken aback by this sudden formality, Klein stuttered in reply, "I-I'm Klein. I'm the guild master of Fuurinkazan."
Although difficult, Yuna worked up the courage to also introduce herself. "I am Yuna and I'm a Major, ranked below Nautilus," she said, blushing.
"Nice to meet you, Yuna-chan," he replied. "Alright, boys, let's get moving!"
However, all rational thought was extinguished when the most awfully gruesome scream split the air. "What was that?!" Kirito yelped.
"It's coming from the direction of the boss room!" Nautilus informed.
Asuna yelled, "Come on, hurry! We need to prepare a strategy meeting!"
"Asuna, there's no time for that!" Kirin retorted. "We have to get back there now!"
"I agree with Kirin!" Kirito added. "Come on!" Taking off at full blast, the five players and Klein's guild ran down the corridors, heading towards the boss room and expecting the worst.
However, what the room yielded to them was nothing like what they had expected.
The demon himself was faced away from them, picking at the injured soldiers. Roaring once, he swung his sword powerfully catching Corvatz's armor and sending him flying. He landed several decimeters away from them. The durability of his helmet reached zero and it shattered into particles, revealing the man's face which was slowly beginning to tear up. "Im… possible…" he mumbled, as his face began to distort before finally exploding into particles.
The silence upon the group was oppressing as if the weight of the sky that was held by Atlas himself was distributed on each of the shoulders of the makeshift raid team. There have been no casualties for boss battles since the fifty-fourth floor and here they are: on the seventy-fourth floor facing an extremely powerful floor boss who had just managed to take the life of one person.
While they were contemplating, the boss had taken no interest in the new group and turned back around. Finally finding his voice, Kirito shouted, "Teleport Crystals! Use them!"
"We can't!" a soldier replied. "They don't work!"
Kirito widened his eyes, his face looking gaunt in the eerie lighting of the room. It was as if he had just seen a ghost, a ghost from the past that riled up his emotions past the point of no return. He muttered, "No… An Anti-Crystal Area…? There was never a boss room with this yet…!"
His knee joints locked in fear. Kirin tilted her head in confusion but was forced to return her attention back to the boss when another scream resounded through the room. She watched in utter disbelief as the boss slowly lifted up its massive sword to decimate the rest of the soldiers. Asuna mumbled, "No…" Kirin looked to her left at her friend. Asuna's beautiful face was marred by a look of utter desolation. Tears began forming at the edges of her eyes as she muttered again, "No… Stop…" Her hand shook as she edged it closer to the hilt of her rapier. When the boss raised its sword to its apex, she lost control. She cried out as she charged into the boss room, her rapier proudly drawn, "No!"
Kirin had also snapped. Strategy meeting or not, this boss must be brought down. She drew her sword and used Vorpal Strike, the blinding crimson light piercing into the room as she closed the distance between herself and the monster in a near-instant and rocketed directly into its back. She grunted in full satisfaction as she heard the boss wail from the sudden and powerful impact she had delivered. Just then, she decided to test a small loophole she had discovered in the system.
She had noticed that there was a small window in time before the end of a specific sword skill and the beginning of its post-motion delay. She wondered what would happen if she activated another sword skill during this short timespan, Finding the point in time she needed, she poured more energy into her blade, yelling, "Sword skill, Vertical Square!" Lifting up her left foot and slamming it down on the ground hard, the fading crimson light of Vorpal Strike was reignited into a searing indigo hue as she twisted her sword ninety degrees to the left within the monster's body (the cutting edge of her blade was perpendicular in relation to the ground) and slashed leftwards, angled slightly to the top. Yanking her sword out, she spun a full circle counterclockwise and slashed again from the right to the right before returning her sword and slashing once from the top down. She ended the sword skill with a full-power cut from the bottom to the top.
Meanwhile, Asuna had finally caught up and unleashed Crucifixion, a sword skill that discolored her weapon a Munsell yellow (the color yellow, according to the Munsell color system) and consists of six high-speed thrusts that trace the shape of a cross (the first three thrusts trace a line horizontally and the last three thrusts trace a line vertically). This gave Kirin enough leeway to skeeter away from the boss after recovering from Vertical Square's post-motion delay. However, Asuna wasn't so lucky. As she was caught in midair, she took on the full temperament of the boss as it angrily turned around. It swung its giant sword at her but Asuna had recovered enough to barely parry it away. However, the brute force of the blade forced her to spin in the air and she couldn't avoid getting punched, sending her flying back. "Asuna!" Kirin yelled. She watched in disbelief as her HP dropped from a full bar to sixty percent of the maximum value.
"Asuna!" Kirito echoed, charging into the room with his weapon drawn as the beast angrily raised its sword to deal the finishing blow against her. He leaped into the fray and flipped his handhold on the weapon (the blade pointing outwards and backward to his right) as he slammed the black sword's edge against the monster's giant blade, forcing it off-course ever so slightly. However, that was enough perturbation aimed at the sword to throw it completely off-course, missing Asuna who was lying disabled on the floor by just about three centimeters. "Scram!" he ordered, jolting Asuna into realizing that her post-motion delay had long since ended; she hopped to her feet and retreated.
Klein muttered something about his luck before running into the room as well, keeping his katana sheathed as he knew that he wouldn't be able to put up much of a fight. Keeping a watchful eye on the boss, he, his guildmates, Nautilus, and Yuna skirted around the edge of the room while Kirito, Asuna, and Kirin kept the boss distracted. He got himself under a soldier laying on the ground and offered him a shoulder. "Alright, guys, you're fine now. I got you!"
The delirious soldier mumbled, "Maria, is that you…?"
Horribly disgusted but not willing to show it, Klein simply stated, "Uh, kiss me and I'll drop you." He and his guildmates picked them up and ran outside the boss room, skirting the walls again so as to not draw aggro. Dropping them outside the room and giving them healing crystals, Klein ordered his guildmates as well as Nautilus and Yuna to watch over them while he himself went back into the boss room. "Hey, Kirin!"
Kirin stepped out of the fray and replied, "What?"
"That thing you just did," he said. "Was that Skill Connect?"
She tilted her head in confusion. "The… what?"
He sighed. "You know that thing you just did? Connecting Vertical Square to Vorpal Strike?"
"Oh, that?"
Klein nodded. "Yeah, it is apparently a skill that we players can use that is not managed by the system."
"Oh-ho?"
"Yeah, you're supposed to 'feel' for it since there is actually a small window in time between the post-motion delay and the end of the sword skill itself," he elaborated. "Activating a second sword skill in that window allows you to bypass the delay and enter directly into the next sword skill."
"How do you know about it?" she asked.
"Well, uh… It's because I accidentally discovered its functions on the tenth floor but I had to go through a lot of trial and error to finally master it. I've done it so much, I apparently have a unique skill that I unlocked eight floors ago."
"Hoh, a unique skill, eh?"
"Yeah, it's called Soaring Slash."
"Hey, Kirin-shi, Klein-san, stop talking and get over here!" Asuna yelled.
"Sorry!" Kirin replied. She ran back to Asuna's side and watched the boss which was currently trying to smash Kirito into bits with the flat end of its blade. Kirin caught a twinkle in the eyes of the monster to which she widened her eyes and shouted, "Kirito, tuck, and roll!" Understanding immediately, he ducked and rolled under the boss's legs. Kirin leaped to her right while Asuna rolled the other direction as the boss opened its mouth and let loose an energy sphere that sailed so close to Kirin she felt the blast of wind against her hair.
"God, this guy won't let up," Kirito grumbled as he recovered from his evasive maneuver.
"Retreat isn't an option here then…" Asuna affirmed. "How will we do this?"
"Like this!" Kirito answered the question by getting up behind the monster and using the royal yellow-clad Vertical to sever its tail which was quite gruesome considering that the tail was made to be that of the body of a boa constrictor. The monster roared in agony and instinctively stuck its foot out backward, in a soccer-like maneuver. Kirito managed to scramble out of the way just in time to avoid getting drop-kicked directly into the wall. He watched in triumph as the severed tail hit the ground and exploded into particles. He then went and regrouped with the others. "I'm not taking any chances. That tail could be dangerous. The only problem now is that gigantic weapon of his…"
Kirin scrutinized Kirito, noting the number of cuts that the monster's sword had given him. "At this rate, it's going to be a battle of attrition…" she muttered. "Kirito, you and Asuna currently have the strongest DPS. You two attack the boss. I'll stay back and support!"
"Alright!" Kirito said. "With the four of us, we might stand a chance!"
Kirin immediately began singing, her voice filling the room with tranquility and tenderness. She invoked a song that induced an HP regeneration buff on her allies before switching to a tune that invokes a boost to all stats. She wasn't confident yet in that all-around booster since she had unlocked it just earlier during the battle with the Demonic Servants. "Kirito, I'm not sure how long this boost will hold! Hurry!"
"Yeah, yeah, I got it," he replied. "Easier said than done though! This boss's strength is off the charts!" He barely had time to finish that sentence because the monster had brought its sword down with full power. Kirito barely managed to hold it back with the flat of his sword, the weight of the giant blade forcing him to his knees. The boss was getting smarter, however. Knowing that it couldn't break through the guard, it drew back its sword and made for a thrust at Kirito's stomach. The speed at which the monster was attacking him was extremely fast. Kirito only managed to sidestep and catch the blade against the flat end of his own blade again, his arm shaking against the weight of the sword. His face twisted in agony, Kirin noticed that he had steeled his expression before shouting, "Kirin, Asuna, Klein, I need ten seconds! Keep it off me!"
Kirin stopped singing and drew her sword again. "Alright." Her all-around buff was beginning to wear off but it was enough for her movement to be so fast it was as if she disappeared. Reappearing five centimeters in front of the boss, she said, "Hi!" Holding her sword in her right hand and near her waist, she activated the royal purple-clad Savage Fulcrum, using her body weight to cut into the left side of the monster's abdomen to the center of its stomach before twisting the blade ninety degrees to the right and forcing her blade even deeper into the monster. She took her sword and tore up through the monster's body and tore back down through the monster's flesh.
She intended to activate the highly damaging Radiant Arc sword skill next but the monster moving in agony at the damage Kirin had caused forced her out of the pre-motion stance needed to use that skill. As such, Kirin failed to exploit the window and felt her body freezing up in the delay. Klein widened his eyes as the boss raised its giant sword to bring it down at the statue that was Kirin. He shouted, "Oh no, you don't! My turn! Take this, you stupid goat! Sword skill: Renge!" He charged into the fray and stopped about a meter away. Setting his body into a position ninety degrees to the left relative to the boss, he put his hand on the hilt of his sword. In a deeply exaggerated maneuver, he drew the weapon and made a powerful slash. The cut had so much back in it, it seemed to create a dimensional rift as it passed through the air. The line whistled through the boss's arm in which it held the sword and completely cut it off. "Asuna, the post-motion delay on this skill is quite long! Extract her from there please!"
Asuna nods as she sheathes her rapier and runs towards Kirin's side. However, Kirin wasn't as disabled as she seemed. She yanked her sword out of the monster's abdomen and fell back before the monster's severed arm would fall and crush her flat. "Is that enough time, Kirito?!"
"Yeah, more than enough!" The monster roared as it grabbed its giant blade in its other hand and made to cut Kirito cleanly in half. However, holding Elucidator in his right hand, Kirito used the cutting edge of the sword to deflect the monster's blade away from him. Kirin watched in awe as Kirito let out a very impressive roar of his own and reached behind his back. Out of nowhere, a second sword sheath with the blade still protected within materialized. Placing his hand on the hilt, he drew it and slapped the giant sword away from him using both swords in hand before activating a sword skill whose periwinkle color contrasted brightly with the dark blue flames of the room and whose conclusion blew the monster back.
"Wha-?" Kirin began. She, Asuna, and Klein watched speechlessly as Kirito proudly held two swords in his hands. Kirin knew he was predominantly right-handed but she didn't know that he also had the acquired ability of ambidexterity. She herself was ambidextrous although, like Kirito, predominantly right-handed.
The rest of the crew observing from behind him, Kirito took an audibly deep breath. "Okay…" he said. "Sword skill: Starburst Stream." Both of his blades, one midnight black the other turquoise blue, glowed an icy blue. He began attacking the boss in a flurry of slashes. His hands flew across the air as he delivered one strike, two strikes, four strikes, eight strikes. His movements were unimaginably graceful as he twirled on his feet to attack more. However, the boss was also dealing damage against him. Halfway through his attack frenzy, the demon had punched him. That punch didn't have enough power to force him away but it was enough to anger Kirito into increasing the speed of his attacks.
Judging from what she could see from her point of observation, Kirito's irate frenzy of attacks began with a horizontal strike with his right sword followed by an upward slash with his left before spinning in a circle and striking horizontally with both swords. He repeated this movement for the fifth and sixth strikes before slashing two 'X's in opposite directions: up and down. He followed up with a top right-down left slash with his left sword and top-left down-right slash with his right sword then attacking in the 'X' fashion again, both up and down. Kirito then traced a square with his next four attacks using both swords: slashing left-right, up-down, right-left, down-up. He ended his assault with a full-powered thrust with both swords before lunging back to deliver another full-power strike, this time with only his right sword.
The boss went silent as Kirito's final thrust with his left blade impaled its abdomen. Exploding into particles, the silence that befell the room was exceedingly oppressing. Suddenly, the forced quiet was shattered by the appearance of a single sign, one that appeared in the air three meters above Kirito and four meters in front. One extremely simple word was written on it: Congratulations!
"Is… Is it over…?" he asked no one in particular. Asuna yelped as he began to teeter on his feet. His balance finally failed and he proceeded to collapse backward onto the floor.
