Wednesday, December 14th, 2022, 11:00 A.M.

"Hmm… this is a problem."

I sighed as murmurs spread throughout the group of players in front of me. At the front of the group stood Kibaou and a man named Lind—the person I had gotten quite angry at after the first boss fight. Much to my displeasure, those two had become leaders of the majority of the clearing group. At current, they each had three full parties' worth of players present for the boss fight. Agil was at the head of a party with three other players, and all six of the Legend Braves were present. The group of heroically-named fighters had been surprisingly cooperative, according to Argo; upon hearing how much damage that their scam was doing, they quickly agreed to stop and do all that they could to make up for it. They were all happy to know that Nezha wouldn't feel like he was dead weight, as well.

Now, however, there was another problem to address. The game had a system for organizing raids, but it had a maximum of eight parties, which meant 48 people total. With Kirito, Asuna, and I included, we had 49.

Lind got everyone to quieten down and began speaking again. "Alright, well… I believe the solution is fairly clear," he said, looking at me pointedly.

"..." I sighed loudly. "Gah, yeah, yeah, alright. You two go join Agil's party. I'll just come along as a straggler."

"You sure, Rei?" Kirito asked, concerned. "You're already behind on xp, and if you're not in a party you won't get as much, plus it'll be harder for you to keep track of health…"

I pushed him towards Agil's group. "I'll. Be. Fine. I'm really not that far behind. If you think it's really that bad I can go grind instead." I opened my menu and left our party, causing the two extra health bars in the corner of my vision to fade away. Despite what I said, I was going to tag along no matter what; I'd still get some experience from the boss, plus regrouping with Kirito and Asuna on the next Floor would be a huge pain if I split off now.

"Okay, okay."

I looked back at Lind, my arms crossed. "Happy?"

He merely blinked in surprise; he probably hadn't expected that to go that smoothly. "Well, that certainly works. I have no arguments if you still want to come along without being in a party, but bear in mind it will be more dangerous."

I held myself back from making a snide retort; now wasn't the time to be starting another argument. I made my way over to Kirito and the others.

"Hey, Rei-san," Agil boomed. "Good to see you again. Sorry we can't do anything about the party situation."

I shook my head and craned my neck to look up at the bald giant. "It's fine. I'm lucky enough that Lind's even letting me tag along, though it's not like he could stop me I guess."

"It's not the last time something like this will happen, though," Kirito said. "Our party aside, sooner or later there's going to be more people in the clearing group than can fit in one raid. I just hope they can come to an agreement easily."

Lind clapped his hands together to quieten a few conversations that had sprung up throughout the raid group. "Alright, with that covered, we can move on to our strategy. I'm sure you all have gotten the guide again?"

The next part of the meeting went over stuff that I had already learned from Argo. Her initial premonition was correct: there was indeed a new boss for the Floor. But it was more complicated than just that.

In the beta, the main boss was Baran the General Taurus, but instead of multiple adds like Illfang had, there was a single sub-boss, named «Nato the Colonel Taurus». Now, there was another cowman to deal with: «Asterius the Taurus King». Naturally, he was the new main boss, with Nato and Baran likely still present as sub-bosses.

Asterius was way bigger than the other two, at 25 to 30 meters tall, and his attacks were all just upscaled versions of the other tauruses. Additionally, he had a paralyzing breath attack. His weak spot was his crown, probably causing him to stagger once it was hit. We were lucky to have Nezha here with us; he was the only person here that could hit the clown, unless someone felt stupid enough to climb the boss. It wasn't clear when during the fight Asterius would appear, though Argo, Kirito, and I all agreed that he probably wouldn't be present from the very start.

The tauruses attacks were fairly simple; they had big hammers, thus slow, smashy attacks. Their special Sword Skill attacks were straightforward as well: Nato's «Numbing Impact» and Baran's larger equivalent «Numbing Detonation» were shockwave attacks that inflicted a stun, and then a paralyze if a player gets hit with the attack again while still stunned. Having never seen Asterius's breath attack, we of course didn't know the specifics of how it worked, but it was fairly straightforward: don't stand in front of the giant cowman when he takes a big breath.

"Alright, my Dragon Knights will be parties A, B, and C. Kibaou's Liberation Squad will be D, E, and F. The Legend Braves will be G, and Agil's group will be H."

I sighed to myself at the names that had been established for Lind and Kibaou's groups. Couldn't they at least wait until they had actually done the guild creation quest?

"A through G will handle Baran, using the same method that we're used to. Once Asterius appears, if Baran isn't close to dead A to C will stay on Baran while D to G will move to Asterius—it's my understanding that one of the Legend Braves has a weapon critical to hitting Asterius's crown. H will handle Nato."

I had expected Lind to foist us onto the sub-boss; he probably didn't want Kirito and me to get a shot at the Last Attack Bonus. Though that decision might not make much of a difference depending on when Asterius spawned. Asuna moved forward a step, prepared to chew Lind out, but Kirito held her back with his arm. Instead Agil stepped forward and provided his usual cool-headed reply.

"It might just be one mob, but handling a whole mid-boss is a big ask for one party. There's also the fact that anything that's been covered could have changed."

"You have a good point. I do not want to repeat mistakes—if there is any sign that the bosses have changed past what we already know we will retreat as fast as we can and regroup to handle the situation better. As for Nato, I'm confident that your group can handle him, but if you need assistance be sure to tell us."

Agil nodded, approving of Lind's words. Kirito let out a breath that he had been holding in; that was as good as we were going to get from Lind. Asuna clicked her tongue.

"Okay… is there anything else anyone wants to add?"

Kibaou, who had been surprisingly silent this whole time, spoke up. "Yeah. All this stuff so far's been based on that strategy guide, right? That really good enough, info from someone that ain't even been in the boss chamber?"

"Well, it's the best we've got, isn't it?"

"Don' we have a couple people here that's actually fought these things already? Think it'd be good to hear if they've got anythin' to say."

Back up. Kibaou wanted advice from us? Since when did he listen to what beta testers had to say? His whole group, the Aincrad Liberation Squad, were anti-tester by principle. From their perspective, the greedy testers all ran ahead of everyone else to monopolize resources; conversely, they ensured that everyone had money and supplies evenly. At least, that was their concept.

Despite all of the evidence otherwise, I could spot nothing in the cactus-head's stare that indicated any of that hatred. He was just genuinely that concerned for the raid.

Neither of us fond of being at the center of attention, Kirito and I both stepped back a bit to avoid the 40-odd stares suddenly directed at us. I elbowed him in the side; better him do the talking than me.

Kirito cleared his throat. "Well, so far all of the mobs on this Floor have used the same attacks as before, so I'd expect the bosses to do the same… Like what's already been said, try to evade once they start their Numbing attacks, but most importantly, if you do get hit by it, you need to avoid getting hit by the attack again no matter what. From what I remember the stun lasts around three seconds. I don't know if any of you here have been paralyzed before… it completely restricts your movement, except for your left hand, which means you can't open your menu. It's only barely enough to let you drink a potion.

"Anyways, as long as you don't panic, the second attack should be easily avoidable. As for Asterius's breath attack…" He paused to think for a moment. "It shouldn't be very wide, otherwise it would be too powerful. The wind-up will be fairly noticeable, so try to move to the side. As long as you don't bunch up in one spot, the number hit by it should be minimal."

"... Well, y'all heard 'im. Don't be dumb and ya won't die."

"How eloquent," I mumbled under my breath.

"Anythin' else? If not, then we should get goin' already!"

Fortunately, the boss fight had started just as we had expected. Nato and Baran spawned as we opened the door; as of yet, Asterius was nowhere to be found. Agil's party (plus me) went to deal with Nato, while the rest of the raid fought Baran.

Like Lind had expected, we were handling Nato well; after about five minutes we had emptied the first of three health bars. Agil and his friends did a good job blocking all of Nato's attacks, and the damage that they were taking was slow enough that only one person had to switch out at a time to use a potion. All seven of us were able to get large bursts of damage in after Nato used his Numbing Impact due to it having a long recovery time.

"We can do this!" Asuna shouted to my right. Agil and the others roared in agreement.

I nodded. "Just don't get too confident. His Impacts will get faster once he hits his third health bar. It's likely that something else about his attacks will change as well, like with Illfang."

After attacking Nato again, I glanced over at the main group of the raid. They weren't doing horribly, but the boss was much more intimidating than Illfang ever was, and it showed. Baran stood taller than Illfang did, and he was much more muscular and aggressive. They players were definitely scared, but they were holding… mostly.

A number of players had been paralyzed already. Paralysis lasted for a full ten minutes; drinking a potion would speed up recovery but it wasn't instant. Another player got paralyzed as I watched, but his party members quickly pulled him to safety. To my surprise, there were about seven or eight players paralyzed—more than I had expected, and more than was safe.

"The main group isn't doing too great…" I mumbled.

Kirito nodded. "They'll be able to beat Baran at this rate, but what will happen when Asterius spawns?"

"Retreating will be really difficult with that many people paralyzed," Asuna said.

Lifting a person wasn't easy; even with the game's assistance, the boost we got from our Strength stats wasn't that significant yet, not to mention that most of the players here weren't heavily based in Strength, and those who were were already weighed down by their armor. Even Kirito and I together couldn't lift one person. Trying to carry over half a dozen people out of the boss room wouldn't go well.

"Kirito, could you go talk to Lind and Kibaou?" I asked. "They need to get their groups more focused on avoiding stuns."

"S-Sure." Kirito covered the hundred-meter gap to the main group, talked to the leaders, and was back in under a minute.

"So?"

"We'll pull back if one more person get paralyzed, but they said they've got the hang of it now. The paralyzed players should be back up by the time Asterius gets here."

We returned our focus to fighting Nato. After a few more attack rotations, we had gotten him to his final health bar. Nato let out a massive roar and started leaning backwards. He kept leaning and leaning, until one of his feet was hovering just off the ground. I had never seen an attack like that before; judging by Kirito's expression, he hadn't either.

"New attack!"

A heavier Numbing Impact? No, it doesn't look balanced right for that. Wait—

"He's going to throw his hammer! Move!" Kirito shouted.

Nato started moving forwards, and I reacted a moment too late. I leapt to the side to try and dodge it; still, the hammer clipped my leg as it spun by. The hammer was quite large and heavy, so the impact was still enough to send me flying backwards; my health dropped by about a quarter, and I was inflicted with a stun as well. My health dropped a bit more after landing about twenty meters away. Fortunately, no one else was hit, and I was at least far enough away from Nato to be out of any danger.

"Rei, you okay!?" Kirito shouted.

I winced a bit as I struggled to sit up. Even with the system's pain absorption, there was still a little pain running through my leg. "I'm fine, I just need to drink a potion! Back off for a minute to watch his patterns, it doesn't look like he's moving to pick his hammer back up!"

After the stun wore off, I stood up and drank a health potion. Since my health hadn't dropped too far, I was able to rejoin the fight quickly.

Fortunately, there was little actual variance in Nato's new attacks; he attacked a bit faster, and he just punched instead of using his hammer. The general direction and range of the attacks were similar; he even used Numbing Impact like before. Once my health was back near full, I rejoined the fight; shortly afterwards, Nato's last health bar reached the yellow zone. Baran's last bar reached half at about the same time, as well.

Right as Baran's health reached half, the air towards the back of the boss chamber started shimmering. Asterius was spawning.

I heard Lind shout from across the chamber. "Asterius is spawning! Don't get distracted and let's get the small fry out of the way!"

Well, small relative to Asterius anyways.

The raid group shouted in agreement, but a lot of them looked quite shaken. Asterius hadn't finished spawning yet, so all that was visible was a thick shadowy cloud of polygons and particles. But it was tall. At least 25 meters, maybe 30, just like our information had told us. That information, however, didn't really help us to grasp how tall that actually was until we saw it for ourselves. It really made me thankful that we had someone that could hit his crown without having to climb up there. I certainly didn't want to.

Speaking of which…

"Heyyy Kirito," I said, in between our attacks on Nato.

"... Something sounds wrong. What is it?"

"How long does paralysis last with a potion?"

"Mm… about a minute? It depends, though."

"And uh, how long do you think it is til Asterius makes it over here?"

As we spoke, Asterius finished spawning. The jet-black, bearded Taurus King reared black and let out a massive roar, electricity arcing along his body and between his numerous horns. With his stride length, crossing the 200-or-so meters to us wouldn't take long.

"U-Uh… less than that…"

"Well, see, that's a problem, because Nezha just got paralyzed… I don't know if it's because of Baran's berserk mode or if he was distracted by Asterius or what, but…"

"Weren't we supposed to retreat if this happened?..." Kirito glanced at the health bars of Nato and Baran. "Everyone! One more all-out attack and we can take down Nato! Don't worry about defending!" He charged the sub-boss, jumped, and struck him right in the horns with a Sword Skill; Nato staggered, giving the rest of us a chance to attack. We all unleashed our most powerful Skills on the Taurus General; just afterwards, the stagger wore off, and Nato prepared another Numbing Impact. Kirito, crazy as he was, managed to cancel out the attack with a Horizontal. We attacked again; I leapt up, using Nato's unused arm as a stepping stone, and drove my dagger straight into the top of his head, earning myself the Last Attack Bonus.

Hah, take that, Kirito. You won't get all the LAs this time.

I let my moment of gloating pass as I fell to the floor, and immediately started charging to Baran using what time we had left. The rest began to follow, but quickly stopped dead in their tracks.

"Rei, wait!" Kirito shouted.

I stopped running and looked back at him, confused. What was he so concerned about? I doubted even Lind would mind that much if we butted into the main fight n—

Oh. Ohhhhh.

It turned out that I overestimated how much time we had. I turned back to my right to see Asterius's massive—and now much closer—form rearing back slightly, his mouth wide open and his eyes aglow; moreover, those glowing eyes were pointed directly at me. After an instant of reflection, I understood; of course the king would first target the person that had killed his precious subordinate.

I turned the opposite direction and dashed as far as I could; I knew at this point that getting out of the width of the breath's reach was impossible, so the best I could do was reducing the damage by distancing myself.

My vision was filled with a white flash, and a thunderclap like an explosion roared in my ears. The sheer force of the lightning breath felt like a wall and blew me off of my feet. The border of my health gauge blinked a few times, and a new icon appeared next to it—paralysis. I had never experienced the debuff before… true to its name, my body was almost completely immobile; I could only barely move my left hand. I watched in horror as my health dropped like a stone; 20—40—60—almost 70 percent of it vanished in one go, sending me well into the red.

After the attack passed, Asuna rushed to drag me out of the way while Kirito and the rest went to attack Baran.

"Are you okay?" she asked after I finished drinking my potions.

The paralysis was a little difficult to talk through. "Well… as okay as I can be with a quarter of my health left. Still a little shell-shocked. That impact was nasty." With some difficulty, I turned to looked at the raid group. "Oh, Baran's down already. I should be fine over here, you go ahead and join back up with them. And uh, don't get too scared of the breath attack… I think it only hurt me so much because I was the only target of it."

Asuna nodded and ran off towards Asterius and the raid group. Nezha's paralysis ended not much longer afterwards, and from that point it was easy sailing. When Nezha hit Asterius's crown with his chakram, it staggered the boss for a few seconds much like how hitting any taurus's horns would do, except guaranteed instead of a random chance. Thanks to that he was able to mostly keep Asterius stunlocked, making the rest of the fight quite easy. It ended with no casualties, and with Kirito getting the LA Bonus (he got the one from Baran as well).

After the fight was over, I walked up to Asuna and Kirito.

"Hey, do you two have this covered? I don't really want to be around for this. Plus… I'm kind of sick of this boss room."

"I don't blame you," Kirito replied. "Yeah, it's fine. Argo should be right outside, waiting to come in, too."

"I'll be going ahead, then. I'll wait for you at the top of the stairs."

The reason I didn't want to stick around—my disdain for the room itself aside—was that Nezha and the Legend Braves were planning to come clean to the raid group about the weapon scam. People being as they are, it was bound to get kind of ugly. I had put up with that enough after Illfang; if conflict like this following the boss fight was going to become a pattern, I was going to make leaving first a habit.

With Kirito, Asuna, Agil, and Argo all there, it wouldn't get too out of hand. Much as I hated them, Kibaou and Lind weren't that stupid, either. But shouting was going to happen, and any at all was more than I wanted to put up with at the moment.

Therefore, I quietly made my way to the far end of the boss room and slipped through the door to the stairs.

Author's Notes

Hey everyone! Floor 2 Clear! Rei… almost died, but it's fiiiine.

Boy oh boy, does this feel good. The second Floor has felt like such a burden to me, and I'm ready to move forwards. This chapter didn't come together as fast as I would have liked, but I got, uh, sidetracked… and basically didn't touch it for two weeks. So there's that. It gave me time to think about how I wanted to do the boss fight, at least.

Man, I had a field day coming up with names for this chapter. So many song names… Had to go with the obvious one, though.

Something that came to my mind as I was looking over the chapter: Aincrad is big. Yeah, that's obvious, I know, but come on. The boss room in this chapter alone is about 200 meters across, and probably about 40 meters tall to accommodate Asterius. I vaguely remember canon saying that each labyrinth (and thus the gap between each Floor) is 100 meters tall, but that honestly feels kind of low. Like, when you're five kilometers away from the edge, in the center of the Floor, how big does that gap look? Would it feel wide open or cramped? How much sunlight would that realistically let through? Come to think of it, do the Floors have any sort of curvature or are they completely flat? That would probably affect how things look a lot, if there wasn't anything to obscure your view of the Floor.

Well, enough rambling; I'll see you when the next chapter gets released—if I end up being consistent it'll probably be done in three to four weeks. But who knows! Maybe I'll get into it and get it done really fast.

Ha.

That's all for now. Take care!