Disclaimer: i only own OC's. whoever owns SAO, it's not me.
Chapter 28: The Birthday Hunt pt.3
'On the castle's level where The Gleam Eyes lay,
From the preferred path you must stray,
Though the walls may be awash with flame,
You begin the next chapter of this game.'
Adamant stared thoughtfully at the blue slip of paper in his hand. "Well, 'The Gleam Eyes' was the floor 63 boss, so we have to go there, does anyone know-"
"Hold on!" Ben interrupted, his hands raised in a timeout gesture. "You're actually doing this?"
Adamant gave him a sidelong look. "Aren't you?"
Ben struggled for words "Well, I mean… Serena is-"
"Probably. Not. Dead." Adamant stated firmly, steel in his eyes. "If it's some quest, Kayaba wouldn't just kill off my teammates. If it's a deranged fan, he'd keep her as ransom. And we're not going to get her back," His determined demeanour cracked for a moment. "Or avenge her, unless we get to the end of this."
Ben grimaced, and then sighed. "I don't like this… But I think I know what your ditty means."
._.
"So that's how you got back up to par!" Jade exclaimed, after Ben described the location he suspected. 'The burning labyrinth', a maze containing mobs that give lots of exp. Nothing special, except that the walls were on fire. Ben nodded as the group walked across the floor. "I couldn't keep on your level just with the assist exp I get from Bulltrue. Of course, Kirito practically soloed The Gleam Eyes a few days after we got to this floor, so I didn't have time to tell you about it." Adamant gave a snort. "Anyway, 'the preferred path' is probably referring to the certain well known way to go in a circle around the maze, and farm mobs the most efficiently. Problem is, since no-one needed to go anywhere else, nobody's made a map of the rest of the maze, soooo…"
"We'll be in a maze with no clear exit and light's nemesis hunting us down." Gorgamith remarked bitterly. Adamant looked at the tank. His arms were crossed and his eyes were down, appearing brooding, far different from his usual, chivalrous appearance. He hadn't sunk into emergency mode the moment his (girlfriend? moral compass? replacement sister?) Had gone totally off the radar, which Adamant had taken as a good sign. But, with a mental sigh, he realised that it didn't mean Gorgamith was unaffected.
Sidling up, Adamant nudged his guild mate's shoulder, asking in a low voice, "Hey. You alright?" Gorgamith raised an eyebrow in a 'seriously?' look, and Adamant elaborated. "I mean, can you still operate?" Gorgamith let out a breath. "Yeah, I just… I'm worried. Worried for Serena, mostly, but… also for us." This time Adamant raised an eyebrow, but as a question, not a mocking gesture, and Gorgamith elaborated. "Serena's awareness is maxed out. That means nothing in this game can hide from her. That's a simple fact about Sword Art Online. If something can get to her without her noticing, then… it isn't meant to be in this game. Do you understand?"
Adamant did. It meant that either Kayaba had done this by giving this 'lights nemesis' a higher sneak skill than should be possible. Or if it was a player, then they could break the game in the same way only his guild had up to that point.
If I may interject... what now Tim? There are other possibilities. Such as? Someone pulled her plug, so to speak. Attempted to remove the nerve gear in the real world. In which case it was some sort of psychopath who managed to get into her room and kill her despite the doctors probably swarming her bedside. She died IRL from some other circumstances, such as disease or malnourishment. Again, surrounded by doctors, and do you have any theories that don't involve her death? She went willingly.
The suggestion, said so offhand, was enough to make Adamant stumble, much to the barely disguised mirth of his teammates.
She what? She willingly ran away for reasons unrelated to this hunt we are partaking in. But… why? Blackmail is a likely possibility. Or perhaps she had a secret lover she preferred to Gorgamith. Or-
"Shut up." Adamant growled, startling his teammates. He shook his head, vainly hoping it would get rid of the stark and tactless Tim. Then, realising his Guild (minus Serena) had stopped behind him, he looked up. "Oh." He said simply, at the flaming gateway in front of him. "Found it."
._.
Ten minutes into the maze and Adamant had decided that grinding in here would not have been worth it. His guild gear may lessen energy damage, but that was if he was in the fire. When he was simply surrounded by it, then he was just wearing black clothes. (Not the best for dealing with heat) Dylan was having a great time, and Jade, in her armour-so-light-it's-better-described-as-summer-clothing, was apparently coping, but Bulltrue and Gorgamith were having a far harder time of it in their armour-so-heavy-it-made-a-nuclear-bunker-seem-flimsy. Of course, they would have probably been better off laying on a beach in this heat rather than on a three metre wide pathway between ten foot walls of fire.
"Not, like, stone thingy's with fire on them." Bulltrue lamented, panting at the back of the group. "Proper walls of like, fire." Ben nodded, leaning on his friend for support and trying to crack a smile. "I assume instead of a note we're gonna find a computer in here, 'cause Kayaba is protecting this thing with some serious firewalls."
"You're bad and you should feel bad." The group chorused, shutting him up for a second, before he called to the front of the group. "Hey Adamant! How do you know where you're going?"
Adamant looked back and shrugged. "Basic psychology. People don't leave their important clues in random places, or strewn on the floor somewhere. Well I would, but normal people wouldn't. So I'm leading us down the hottest corridor each time assuming that will lead us to the centre of the maze." Ben couldn't be bothered to raise his eyes from the floor to give his leader a look but said. "And how will you know when we get to the centre?"
"Maybe there will be a ceiling of fire in the middle."
Ben sighed and finally began to lift his eyes, sarcastically muttering. "My, what a specific piece of information. I wonder how you came to that conclusion-oh great you found it."
._.
Through a pathway, the group could see a pedestal that (surprise surprise) supported a chest. The only difference was the burning, arched roof over that pathway, making it reminiscent of a tunnel. Jade judged the length calculatingly. "Okay, that tunnel is bound to have some sort of trap in it." There was muttered assent from the rest of the group. "Do you want me to sprint through it?"
Gorgamith elbowed past her and unslung his shield from his back. "No." He said, simply. "If you can't outrun the trap, you're dead. And if there's a boss in there, I'd rather you sprint in after me than you wait for me to lumber up."
He's projecting his brotherly feelings onto Jade because Serena isn't an available outlet for them- Could you stop?
Adamant shoved the thoughts aside and put his hand on Jade's shoulder, silencing her rebuke with a don't go there look. Then he nodded at Gorgamith. The tank moved to a few steps before the tunnel, braced for a moment, then ran.
While he was hardly a runner, Gorgamith could reach an impressive pace. (Adamant could testify to it after being on the receiving end of one of his shield charges.) The tunnel was roughly a hundred metres long, and Gorgamith was barely a third of the way through it when the walls of flame began to leak lava. Jade leapt back in alarm from her position just at the entrance, but the molten rock hit some sort of invisible barrier before it could leave the tunnel, and instead progressed worryingly quickly towards their sprinting comrade. Adamant firmly believed Gorgamith could make it, but then lava began raining from random points in the ceiling.
Gorgamith panted and strained to quicken his pace. Exercise fatigue in SAO was the same as sleep deprivation. You could feel it, but it wouldn't actively knock you out or anything. So Gorgamith ignored the building burn in his legs, knowing that if he didn't keep going then he would get a far more dangerous burn. Twenty metres from the exit, fifteen, he dodged a dollop of lava dropping from the ceiling. Ten, five, the escape loomed ever closer. His foot was just about to cross the 'finish line' when the roof positively erupted with lava, boiling liquid falling towards him-
…The rest of the guild simply gaped in shock as lava filled the passage. It stayed at roughly head height, restrained still by the invisible barrier. Then, over the course of a few seconds (though it felt like years to the bedraggled group.) It drained away back into the walls...
To reveal Gorgamith standing there, shaking leftover lava off his shield, and grinning broadly at them. The remainder of the guild whooped and cheered and ran (at a far more casual pace) through the tunnel, and no more lava fell on them. Gorgamith moved off to the side, apparently spotting something, and Adamant grinned to himself for just another moment, before facing the realisation that Serena was still gone, which managed to send his mood plummeting again. He exited the tunnel first, idly kicking open the lid of the chest to find it empty, then looked across to congratulate his guild mate and GORGAMITH WAS GONE.
Adamant let loose every piece of colourful language he knew as he looked around the entire room and back out into the tunnel, thinking: How? There was one exit! One! It is entirely possible that he was teleported out- Not now! Adamant turned his gaze to the floor, and found what he had expected. Two small notes. He picked up the red slip and, and, horror growing in his heart, read the poem.
'Darkness Ender' lays upon his shield,
Apparel he may no longer wield.
More challenges await, will you last?
Your life, and struggle, are ending fast.
Baa dum, dum, dum, tsh, another one bites the dust. the final upload before i ditch you all for two weeks. Maybe i'll be lucky and find wifi somewhere in france, but if not, well, you have a cliffhanger for two weeks. *Evil Grin.* Please follow, favourite, and review fairly. if i can get 3000 views by the time i get back, i will be uber chuffed with you guys. Until then, see y'all!
