Disclaimer: I don't own Sword Art Online or any of its characters. They are all owned by A-1 Pictures, Aniplex USA, and Reki Kawahara.

A/N: Thanks to Kurama for being a beta for this chapter.

Discord: A3dTszc

(See A/N at the top of Chapter 1 for context)


The players slowly made their way inside the boss room with hesitant steps.

No one spoke a word after Diabel's declaration. Not until they had all advanced far enough inside for the room to activate, anyway. When it finally did, everyone stood by and watched as Illfang picked up his axe and leaped into the center of the room.

The boss roared and the minions spawned.

"Commence attack!" Diabel shouted.

All of the players charged.


Kirito had been waiting inside for almost an hour before the rest of the players had arrived. He had entered the room in advance and had made all of his preparations.

While he had been on his own, he had been making various attempts at getting Illfang to demonstrate his glitchy behaviour once again, in the hopes of figuring out exactly how the mechanics worked. However, Kirito hadn't had much luck. He hadn't been able to replicate it. He could get Illfang to travel to the opposite side of the room and wait there, watching, like he had before, but he hadn't been able to lure out that mysterious ranged attack.

Eventually, as the scheduled time of the raid drew nearer and nearer, Kirito had been forced to abandon these attempts to avoid being discovered. When the time finally came, he had left the room and closed the door to reset everything, only to re-enter a moment later and hide in the corner. He had then waited out the remaining time until the players had shown up.

Kirito had no intention of trying to solo the boss again until he figured out exactly what Illfang had done to almost kill him back then. The Swat had opened up far too many unknowns. He firmly believed that soloing Illfang was only possible if he had a rock-solid plan that accounted for everything that the boss could do. So, until he understood all of Illfang's new mechanics, he was not willing to risk his life again so recklessly.

With that decision, he had decided to let the raid party give Illfang a shot themselves. He didn't believe for a second that they would actually succeed in the end, but it's not like he would be able to stop them from trying anyway. If he tried to confront anyone and explain Illfang's new mechanics to get them to reconsider the raid, uncomfortable questions would immediately be asked.

Who are you? Why do you know these things? Why should we believe you?

There was nothing that Kirito could really say without exposing himself. So, instead of trying to warn anyone that Illfang was not as he seemed, he'd just sit back and let them figure everything out on their own.

If it looked like someone was about to die and nobody else seemed to notice, then he'd step in. But only then.

There had been some problems with this wait-and-see approach that Kirito had first needed to solve, however.

The first one was the fact that Illfang would be unarmed when the players faced off against him due to the fact that Kirito had stolen his weapons earlier. Fortunately, he had thought of an idea about how to hide that detail from everyone the previous day.

He had discovered the last time he was in that room that Illfang would try to use his weapons if they were nearby, no matter if the system technically declared them as his or not. Illfang would still pick them up and try to use them if given the opportunity to, even though Kirito was listed as the owner.

That mechanic formed the basis of his plan. Before the players arrived, Kirito had done the reverse of what he usually did when Illfang was asleep in the room. Instead of sneaking around the room to steal the weapons while the boss was asleep, he had snuck around the room and given the weapons back.

They were still his, and Kirito could summon them back at any moment right out of Illfang's hands, but the crucial detail here was that none of the other players in the room would be able to notice this. The only way anyone would be able to tell that Illfang was using weapons that didn't technically belong to him anymore was if someone else made an attempt to claim them and got the message prompt during the process saying that they already had an owner.

But that was unlikely to happen, in any case. Kirito expected the battle to proceed as normal for the most part. The players would attack, slowly lower the boss' health, and then Illfang would switch to the nodachi at the appropriate time.

But he didn't think that the players would make it that far. Once Illfang started using his new ranged attack, he expected them to immediately retreat and regroup. It was just too much of a shock to deal with without having prior information.

Kirito needed to see that again. It was pretty much the entire reason why he was there at all. He had his camera perched on top of one of the pillars, recording everything. Having no intention of taking part in the raid himself, Kirito spied on the raid group from the corner of the room, hidden by his camouflage. He was there to collect information as a spectator, nothing more.

He expected Illfang to live to see another day.

In fact, most of Kirito's future plans depended on it.


Minutes passed by as the battle raged on.

There was nothing to note, really, about any of it. There were no intricate tricks being used by the players to get one over on the boss, or any other amazing plan going on in the background. It was all standard strategy that Kirito had seen dozens of times before.

There were three main battle groups. One handled the minions, one handled the boss, and the last one functioned as a reserve, allowing players to rotate out whenever their health got too low.

It was pretty much common sense how these groups functioned together.

Nobody there cared about squeezing out every last drop of DPS possible or being maximally efficient in this battle, so there were no advanced tactics in play. No one was going for a speed kill or anything like that. Since the majority of the players were new to boss battles, the only thing everyone cared about was getting a win, even if the victory itself was crude. All of the tricks that would start showing up on later floors that involved complicated player roles were nowhere to be found. There were no specialized players in the raid. No heavy tanks that focused entirely on blocking attacks. No potion runners, carefully keeping track of all the cooldowns. It was a straightforward strategy that basically allowed any player to do whatever they wanted to, within reason.

Group up and damage it till it dies. That summed it all up nicely.

Illfang was an easy boss to deal with if you ignored all of his glitchy behaviour, so nothing more complicated than that was warranted. Once these players got some more combat experience against other floor bosses, however, Kirito expected that they would start learning how to do some of that other stuff.

As the boss's HP got lower and lower, Kirito started to frown. Illfang's HP had gone below 50% yet, despite that, nothing unusual happened. None of Illfang's glitchy behaviour presented itself.

'It'll happen any moment now.' Kirito was sure of it.

Illfang suddenly roared in pain as a group of ten players unleashed a devastating, coordinated attack on him.

Kirito nervously glanced around the room from his hiding spot. All the minions were being properly checked. Diabel was coordinating all the parties admirably, and everything was working exactly as planned. Everyone was doing their job.

Several more minutes passed by, filled with a cacophony of battle cries from the players, the sounds of an intense battle, and roars from the boss and his minions.

Diabel shouted out some more commands.

Illfang's HP lowered to one third.

Kirito continued to watch with increasing levels of disbelief as the players continued their assault.

A few more minutes passed.

Illfang's Hp dropped to a quarter.

Then 10%.

Then 5%.

'It wasn't supposed to be like this.'

Kirito should have been happy at their unexpected success. He really should have, and he knew it. But instead, he couldn't help but start to feel frustrated.

Because they were fighting Illfang on easy mode.

If the boss had been this easy when Kirito had last fought it, then he would have won hands down. He was sure of it. He had no idea why, but Illfang was being annoyingly lenient on everyone now. The boss hadn't once used its ranged attack yet. It hadn't really put up much of a fight at all, actually.

This caused a disturbing thought to cross his mind for the first time.

'They might actually win.'

Kirito surprised himself when he internally started rooting for Illfang.

He didn't want any of these players to die or anything, but at the very least, he wanted them to understand some of what he had gone through earlier by experiencing it themselves. He wanted them to understand that Illfang was unpredictable and dangerous, and should not be underestimated by any means. Kirito had nearly died fighting this boss, and he wanted these players to learn of this danger first-hand.

But that wasn't what was happening.

It felt as if he was a mountain climber, who had spent years and years of his life dedicated to a strict training regiment, all so that he could one day see what the world looked like from the summit of a huge mountain. Kirito had then made repeated, gruelling attempts to climb that mountain only to ultimately fail in the end and be forced to turn back. Then, as he reached the ground after this failure, he discovered that this group of players had taken a helicopter ride 99% of the way to the top, climbed less than 30 meters, and then returned to try and regale him with tales about what a harrowing experience it had been and how much better they obviously were at climbing than he was. Because they had ultimately succeeded in the end, while he had not. They had seen the view that had been Kirito's life goal all along while Kirito himself had been forced to give up on it.

It was vexing and completely unfair. It felt like they were cheating. But in reality, they were probably just getting unbelievably lucky. The worst part about it though was that these players didn't know that it was luck, so they were now probably overestimating their own collective skill. Not knowing that it was actually pretty lacklustre and that they were just getting favourable RNG the whole time.

Kirito wanted Illfang to make a genuine attempt to defeat these people. Not whatever this meagre effort was supposed to be. Illfang was getting his butt kicked in a completely one-sided, curb-stomp battle.

The rapier user, the girl that Kirito had spoken to a few days ago and who had wanted to off herself by fighting herself into exhaustion, stepped up next. She stood in front of the boss and delivered an unholy combination of strikes that sent it flying back into a pillar in a comical display of incompetence.

Raucous cheers from all around filled the room.

It was as if none of what Kirito had gone through had even happened. As if the universe itself had forgotten all about it.

'Yeah, Illfang was actually super easy. A textbook boss battle with no complications. Only an idiot would have failed to win.'

That was what the summary of today's battle was going to look like. And it pissed Kirito off a good deal more than it should have.

He glared at the boss from his position in the corner of the room as it struggled to stand up again. After making it to his feet, Illfang finally threw his weapons to the side and reached for his nodachi.

That was Kirito's last hope.


"Everyone step aside!" Diabel shouted as he powered up a sword skill. "I'll finish it!"

He charged forward but was caught unprepared as Illfang radically increased his speed in an instant.

Illfang bounded across the room at a frightening pace and lunged towards the raid leader.

'Finally,' Kirito realized, relieved.

Illfang had upped his game a little.

Because the players had been surviving entirely on lucky breaks in the RNG in Illfang's attack cycles, when Illfang actually started putting in a little bit of effort, as he was supposed to be doing all along, it caught everybody flat-footed when it shouldn't have.

This was Illfang's normal level of difficulty from Kirito's point of view. But, to these players, it looked as if he had powered up significantly.

Kirito winced as the realization of what was about to happen struck him. He could see it in his mind's eye. Illfang was practically going to cleave Diabel in two. This presented Kirito with an uncomfortable decision. He knew exactly what he needed to do in order to stop it from happening, but his intervention would almost immediately guarantee Illfang's defeat.

Because the players had underestimated the boss and had been caught with their guard down as a result, Kirito was going to have to pay the price for it.

He hesitated.

It was completely unfair.

Deciding whether or not to intervene at that moment was a really tough decision, but, in the end, he could only shake his head with a grimace.

What real choice was there? There wasn't one. It was either intervene or let a player get killed. Since he didn't want to stand by and watch that happen, Kirito chose to do what he knew to be the right thing. His hand had been forced. He was probably going to have to face some fallout for what he was about to do, but at the very least, a player wouldn't die just because he chose to sit by and watch it happen.

At least he wouldn't add to his already lengthy list of regrets.

At the last instant, just before Diabel was dealt a killing blow, Kirito summoned the nodachi into his hand.

The weapon belonged to him after all, and weapons could be summoned back to the owner's hand, regardless of distance.

From the perspectives of the other players in the room, it seemed as if Illfang's weapon had simply vanished into thin air. There was no way for them to tell that it had teleported across the room, straight into the invisible hands of the player that actually owned it.

Kirito did not have any followup plan for what he had just done. He certainly didn't intend to reveal himself to everyone, but there was no doubt that Illfang's suddenly missing weapon would be questioned. Especially by Diabel himself, who had witnessed it disappear right before his eyes. Kirito had no idea how everyone would react to that. They might even think that it was a glitch of some kind.

But less than a second later, Kirito noticed a convenient detail.

None of the players were facing in his direction. Kirito was behind them, after all, near the boss room door. And all the players were located roughly in the center of the room in front of him.

There was a small window of opportunity at that moment that Kirito did not hesitate to take. It may have been too late, but it didn't matter. Anything he could do to remove suspicion from himself was worth it in his mind. So with his nodachi in hand, he spun around a single time with his helicopter technique to pick up the required momentum and tossed it at the opposite wall of the room as hard as he could.

It lost its invisibility the instant it left the range of Kirito's camouflage. Then the weapon smashed into the targeted wall with a violent clanging noise and then clattered onto the ground.

Many players spun around at the sudden noise behind them, and Kirito could easily observe their thought processes.

Kirito had changed the way the event would be perceived with that singular action. Now it wasn't the case that Illfang's weapon had vanished outright under mysterious circumstances, but it had instead 'slipped out of Illfang's hand at an extremely fast speed without anyone noticing, and had launched itself into the corner of the room'.

This, while a stretch, was a much more reasonable explanation than the weapon outright vanishing. It would not hold up as an explanation if anyone seriously scrutinized it, but it was plausible. More plausible than the alternative. Rather than a mysterious event that required extensive investigation, it would instead be seen as a simple, incredible stroke of luck for the blue-haired player whose life had been saved by it.

It had been a magic trick. A simple, subtle action intended to completely change how the event would be perceived by everyone there.

Kirito could only hope that none of the players had been paying close attention during that moment and that they would conclude that this is what had occurred rather than start questioning things too closely.

Illfang reacted to his missing weapon surprisingly quickly. He swung his fist at the immobile Diabel and sent him flying through the air. It was a devastating impact, but it wasn't lethal.

Kirito was not prepared for the direction that the raid leader flew in, however. Diabel flew through the air, skipped across the ground a few times, and landed right at Kirito's feet, only a meter or so away.

He stared at the downed player with widened eyes for a few moments, before looking up and noticing a bunch of players staring at him.

Not at Kirito specifically, but in the direction that Diabel had flown, which had simply caught him up by coincidence. Since nobody had any reason to use their Searching skills at the moment, however, their eyes did not notice him because of his camouflage. Nonetheless, it was still extremely uncomfortable that they were all facing in his direction, so Kirito intended to slowly slink out of their direct line of sight just to be on the safe side.

But he froze in confusion based on what he heard next.

"Diabel! He's dead!"

Kirito blinked.

He looked back down at Diabel's HP and noticed immediately that it was around 50% and holding there. He was nowhere even close to being dead.

'What are they talking about?'

Anyone with a pair of eyes would clearly notice that the blue-haired player was okay. Maybe he was roughed up a little, sure, but an HP potion or two and he'd be good as new. Kirito had no idea what they were talking about.

Illfang did not sit idly by as all of these events transpired. He suddenly surged into the crowd of players and started swinging his fists around, causing the entire raid group formation to start breaking down.

Kirito continued to watch as the players became more and more uncoordinated. With the sudden loss of their leader, they had been dealt a crippling blow that they couldn't recover from. Which he thought was odd considering the fact that Diabel was clearly alive.

Kirito looked back down at the blue-haired player. The man was lying face down, dazed. He took a closer look at Diabel's HP bar and noticed a debuff on it.

It was a stun. He had been hit hard enough to essentially become paralyzed for a few moments. It was a temporary thing, and he'd be completely fine once the timer expired. A detail which, again, should have been noticed by everyone else immediately.

In fact, now that he thought about it, Kirito found it incredibly strange how none of the other players rushed over to see if their leader was alright. Judging by how many friends the player had, he'd have thought that plenty of others would have been frantically checking to see if Diabel was okay.

But it didn't happen. Nobody spared their downed leader a second glance.

Over the next 30 seconds, the formation continued to fall into disarray. The rapier user made a genuine and admirable attempt to turn things back around, but she didn't have a partner to coordinate with. If she had been able to switch with someone it would have been a different story. But since she didn't, she failed.

Illfang backhanded her across the room into a pillar, stunning her and putting her out of action for a few moments.

A few other players suffered similar fates, and some were nearly killed. By that point, what happened next was inevitable.

"R-retreat! Fall back! We can't lose anyone else!"

Kirito raised his eyebrow when all the remaining players made a coordinated effort to pick up all the stunned players and carry them out of the room.

His disbelief rose to even further heights when everyone ignored Diabel and just left him there alone.


After the rest of the players left, Kirito spent the next several moments surveying the room.

Only he and Diabel remained inside. But for some reason, neither the minions, nor Illfang himself, went after the downed player, and Kirito had no idea why. It was as if Diabel was invisible to them somehow.

He just couldn't understand it.

'Why aren't the minions charging towards him?'

What could possibly cause a player to be invisible to―

It clicked right then.

Diabel was too close to him.

Kirito, on a hunch, frantically opened up his menu and navigated to his Hiding skill menu.

He had gained a new ability without noticing. His camouflage could now be extended to other players if he allowed it to. He could hide with other people as long as they were close to him. There would obviously be a penalty and the camouflage would be weakened significantly if he did so, but anyone within a certain range, unless Kirito disabled the new setting, could be hidden from view.

That's what was happening.

Diabel could have been launched on a million different trajectories, but due to an extraordinary fluke, he had landed exactly within range of Kirito's camouflage which had given him this new ability. Then a second fluke had occurred, as upon obtaining this new ability it was set up to be automatically active by default. It was an ability that was always active unless Kirito deliberately turned it off.

Because of those two flukes, the rest of the players had seen Diabel suddenly vanish and must have mistaken that for him being killed.

But, perhaps more disturbingly, what this meant was that if Diabel stood up and turned around, he would immediately spot Kirito since they were under the same cloaking ability.

Kirito immediately leaped away from the downed player.

Now it made sense to him why everyone else had left. They had seen Diabel suddenly vanish from view, so they had assumed him to be dead, obviously having no idea that Kirito was there.

Abruptly, Diabel stirred and stood up with a groan.

His stun debuff had expired, giving him the freedom to move around once more. After collecting himself, he pulled out an HP potion and looked around. He spotted Illfang and picked up his sword.

"So everyone else was forced to retreat, huh?" He questioned aloud, to no one in particular.

Diabel grinned and drank his potion. Then he pulled out another one and drank that too, bringing him back up to full health.

"Where do you think you're going!" He called out to Illfang, as the boss walked back towards his throne.

Kirito nearly face-palmed at how idiotic that was. He could predict exactly what was about to happen now. Diabel was exactly the type of player to try and act like some sort of hero and finish off the boss alone.

Illfang turned back around at the sudden sound but did not advance.

Kirito's heart froze as he recognized the behaviour.

Illfang was acting weird again.

The boss just stood back and watched. The minions, on the other hand, all began to charge. All apart from that single one, anyway. Just as had happened before, one minion remained at Illfang's side while the other five charged forward.

Diabel, however, didn't seem to notice the behaviour change at all. He broke into a jog, then a sprint, before finally engaging all five charging minions at once.

Kirito was immediately on edge. He started frantically trying to put together a contingency plan.

All manner of questions started racing through his head. What was he supposed to do if something happened now? What if Illfang used his ranged attack on this guy? Would Kirito be forced to reveal himself to save this player's life again?

Back when the rest of the players had been there they had been able to look after each other which had prevented the need for Kirito to have to step in directly to save anyone. No one else was there now, though. The only person that could watch Diabel's back was Kirito himself. And he probably would not be able to disguise the action in a plausibly deniable way like he had last time if it came to that. He'd undoubtedly be forced to reveal himself if things went south.

"I'm not going to let it end like this!" Diabel shouted as he battled the minions. "Not after all that's happened! We're so close! I'm not leaving until you die, Illfang! Do you hear me?!" His shouts echoed off the walls of the room.

'This guy is like an anime character,' Kirito realized. And not in a good way. He was one of those hero types that refused to give up. A trait that would have been respectable in any situation other than this one.

Kirito just wanted the room to himself now. He wanted this player to leave so that Illfang could regenerate. Then Kirito would be safe to leave the room unattended without having to worry about the boss dying. This would give him the opportunity to go and safely eavesdrop on the failed raid party of players that were no doubt making their way out of the labyrinth, an act which might let him find out when they planned on making their next attempt on the boss. Kirito needed to find out what their schedule was so that he could plan his own experiments and attempts around it. But, for any of this to happen, Diabel had to leave first.

His stubborn refusal to do so was annoying. It was a completely hopeless battle with an inevitable outcome. Diabel wasn't anywhere close to skilled enough to pull off a win here on his own.

Not knowing what else to do, Kirito sat back and watched the player struggle for a while. He figured that Diabel would tire himself out and retreat eventually once the sheer weight of the self-appointed task became evident to even him.

Then Kirito would finally have the room to himself.


"Let go of me!" Asuna shouted at Agil, as she was carried like a sack of potatoes over the man's shoulder and carried further and further away from the room.

"Stop shifting around, miss. The battle is over," Agil replied. He didn't like how everything had played out any more than she did, but it was time to accept the reality of the situation.

"No, it's not!" She cried. "We can still win! Just let me go!"

Asuna elbowed Agil in the back of the head, forcing him to grunt in surprise and drop her.

Before Agil even had time to turn around, Asuna was back on her feet, and running in the opposite direction, leaving the rest of the retreating players behind her. She had wasted no time in sprinting back towards the boss room.

Agil considered going after her but thought better of it. Since all the players had left the boss room, the doors would have closed. When that girl finally made it back there, he realized, all she would see is a set of closed doors. If she tried to open them, she would find a fully regenerated Illfang inside. Bosses fully healed themselves every time all players have left the room, after all. This much was known from the guidebook.

Even if she were reckless enough to go back inside the room again, she'd be forced to turn back.

With that thought in mind, Agil set his sights on helping out some of the other wounded players instead of running after that girl.

He never would have caught up to her anyway since she was faster than him.


Kirito watched with a dark sort of amusement as Diabel's situation got progressively more and more hopeless. He was struggling with all of his might, but the odds he was up against were just impossible to handle. Diabel was on his last legs and wasn't even able to keep up with the minions who were all ganging up on him anymore. It was only a matter of time before it would become too much and he would be forced to withdraw.

In fact, that time had already come and gone. Diabel had been getting overwhelmed for the last minute or so. Constantly losing his footing and getting thrown to the ground, his HP had been lowering more and more. It was only thanks to his reckless, stubborn refusal to face reality that he was still there inside the room.

But that would fade in the end, Kirito knew. If it didn't, and if he made the stupid decision to fight himself to death the way that girl had a few days back, then Kirito would forcibly drag him out of the room kicking and screaming.

Even now he was planning out how he could go about doing that whilst minimizing the exposure to himself. If he could pull it off without the player getting a good look at him, without saying anything, and without showing off anything about his fighting prowess, then Kirito would be able to deal with that.

Diabel was thrown to the ground once again with a cry of surprise.

Kirito shook his head and prepared to step in. He took a careful, considering glance around the room and planned out the operation.

He'd jump behind Diabel, grab him by the back of his armour, and sprint as quickly as possible back towards the door, dragging the player across the ground behind him.

Diabel would be unable to turn his head fully around to see him properly, and Kirito would be in and out in only a handful of seconds. Kirito would then vanish as soon as he confirmed that the doors were closed and that Illfang was healed.

That would be that.

'No wait, that won't work. I almost forgot…'

His camera. Kirito would have to quickly pick it up first. If he left the room with all the other players while leaving his camera behind, Kirito didn't actually know what would happen. It might count as a player being present and stop the boss from regenerating even if the doors closed, so Kirito couldn't afford to take that chance. He glanced up at where he had hidden it and carefully considered his options.

If he simply summoned it back to his hands, he'd lose the footage it had been collecting since he had placed it up there, so that wasn't an option. But if he went to grab it now, he might lose the chance to save Diabel and the player could die as a result while Kirito was in the middle of climbing a pillar or something.

He'd have to grab it after, Kirito decided. He'd even be able to learn something new with this plan.

He'd drag Diabel out of the room and close the doors, leaving Illfang alone inside. Then Kirito would re-open the doors and jump back inside by himself. Then he'd use the locking switch to lock Diabel outside. Kirito would then have the opportunity to then grab his camera and teleport outside with either his ring or a crystal.

...But then Diabel would see, Kirito realized. Diabel would see him run back inside the room like this. The wannabe hero would then probably get extremely worried and start blabbering all about his mysterious saviour who had locked himself inside the boss room to all the other players.

So Kirito would have to figure out how to ensure that Diabel wouldn't see him when he did this.

But just when Kirito had decided on a workable plan, he heard scurrying footsteps coming from the door. He spun around and watched as someone else sprinted into the room and started looking around.

Kirito recognized her immediately.

The rapier user.

He inwardly cursed when the girl set her eyes on Diabel and rushed over. She leaped into the fray without a second thought and immediately started shifting the tide of the battle.

Her battle cry as she activated a Linear marked the destruction of all of Kirito's plans. Because Kirito knew that she wasn't going to be leaving anytime soon.

'These goddamn heroes! Just get lost already!' Now he was going to have to figure something else out. His whole plan was just gone now.

"W-who―?" Diabel asked his saviour.

"It doesn't matter," Asuna replied. "I'm here to help."

Diabel grinned.

"Excellent. With the two of us here, we still have a shot!"

With their morale soaring, the two of them started working together and started to beat back the minions. They displayed remarkable teamwork given how little they seemed to know each other and seemed to regain the initiative in the battle.

But they did not stop there. As they punched through the group of minions, they immediately set their sights on the boss standing on the far end of the room and started rushing over with a pair of battle cries.

They defeated minions left and right as they charged across the room. As the two players crossed over into Illfang's magic range, the boss immediately stopped his weird glitchy behaviour and charged back towards them in response.

Kirito still had no idea why that happened. Once a player stepped within a certain radius of Illfang when he was glitched out and watching the battle with his minions from a distance, then everything suddenly just went back to normal.

"I'll attack first, then we'll switch!" Diabel ordered as they closed the distance. "You focus on the boss, and I'll keep the minions busy when they approach!"

"Right!"

Diabel parried Illfang's first attack and called out the switch.

The rapier user took the opening and dished out massive damage with a combination of strikes.

Illfang struck back, but Diabel stepped in front of the swing with another parry, calling out yet another switch.

The rapier user stepped in again and dealt out even more damage.

The two players repeated this procedure a few more times before eventually, the first of the new set of minions arrived.

"Keep him busy!" Diabel ordered. "I'll finish off the minions!"

"I'll do my best!"

Kirito's hopes were raised slightly as he continued to watch the proceeding events.

Their tactic wasn't going to work, he immediately realized. Diabel was not able to kill the minions fast enough to clear them all out before more arrived. So the rapier user was stuck kiting the boss around forever, without having the opportunity to deal any more damage to it. So they were immediately bogged down in a stalemate situation.

It was not immediately obvious that they had what it took to defeat the boss, even when they worked together. It was very much possible that they would still lose, Kirito realized.

It could actually be advantageous that the girl had shown up, now that Kirito thought about it. With this girl here now, she could do all the work in dragging Diabel outside if they failed at defeating this boss. Kirito himself might not even have to lift a finger. He could just pick up his camera and leave after these two were gone.

So he continued quietly rooting for Illfang, hoping that the kobold would take home the win in the end. But, just in case, he tried to come up with a contingency plan.

It would be annoying, but if he could get both of them outside, even if they saw him go back inside for his camera after, then he could still make that work. The two players would blab about the mysterious cloaked player that they had seen, but it would not be able to be traced back to him specifically. Argo would have a field day with the information, and that was always bad news, but at least the players would lose the battle with Illfang in the end, and Kirito would be given the opportunity afterwards to make a solo attempt sometime in the future.

All the problems in his plans stemmed from his lack of opportunity to grab his camera. Kirito glanced back up to where it was perched. If he picked it up now, then most of his plans would be simplified. But at the same time, it was already placed in the perfect position. If something happened during this fight, there was no better location for it to be in, in order to see the event clearly. So if he grabbed it now, he might miss something. So he decided to leave it there.

Kirito continued trying to plan while he watched the battle before him.

The two players had lost their edge. And it was now starting to become obvious, even to them.

"Shit!" Diabel cursed. "This isn't working!"

"I've got a plan!" Asuna declared.

"R-really?! What?!"

"We'll switch targets together!"

The rapier user deflected Illfang's strike and turned back towards the minions. She leapt into the group and killed two of them, while Diabel finished off the rest.

Kirito frowned.

He could immediately see what their new plan was. Diabel had been killing the minions one at a time, individually. This had caused them to respawn in the same manner. One at a time. This meant that they had been respawning continuously, never allowing the two players to have a break from fighting them. By killing them all at once like they had, they had all respawned at once, sure, but they now all had to cross the room towards them together.

There wasn't a trickle of minions, one arriving every few seconds anymore. They were now arriving in huge groups, separated by much longer periods of time, which gave them several seconds in which they could inflict damage on Illfang while they were waiting for more to show up. Then they would repeat the process.

It took only a single iteration of this plan for Diabel to understand it in its entirety.

"You're a genius! This can work!"

After clearing out the minions they switched their attention back to the boss and pulled off a switch. They dealt a decent amount of damage, and then as the next group of minions arrived, the rapier user deflected Illfang's weapon and the two players changed targets once again.

It took them about five seconds to clear them all out, and then they turned back to face the boss just in time to receive his counterattack.

Then they did it again.

After only a few more iterations, they had it down to a routine.

Kirito would have been impressed by them if he weren't so irritated.

They had the edge again, and Illfang was starting to run out of HP pretty quickly. Most of it had already been depleted from the earlier battle. So there were only a few percentage points left. If he had been at 100% HP when these two had started doing this, this strategy would have been impractical, as it would have taken all day to get anywhere with it. But with only that small amount of HP left, Kirito realized that there was a very real chance that they would finish it off here. It'd only take a few more minutes at the rate they were going.

Kirito continued to watch their progress with increasing levels of frustration.

All of his plans and preparations were going to be ruined by these two. Everything he had worked for to be able to finally solo the floor boss would have been for nothing. But perhaps most importantly, once Illfang died, Kirito would never be able to find out the answer to what had hit him that day. The Swat. The truth behind that mystery would die forever when Illfang was gone.

A battle started to wage inside him.

He should have been happy for them. He really should have. The players needed this victory to give everyone hope for the future. They had worked incredibly hard for it. So he made a genuine attempt to just… let it go. To let them have their victory and move on.

But at the same time, there was a fundamental piece of information that would go undiscovered if that happened.

Kirito's next actions came down to the answer to a single question. What was more important? Taking a step towards beating the game? Or finding out more information on how the world worked?

Progress vs Knowledge.

If Illfang died now, nobody would ever learn about that mysterious attack. But if he didn't die, the players might spiral down into a pit of collective hopelessness and despair at their failure.

So what was more important?

It was an incredibly difficult decision, and Kirito found himself right on the fence. He knew that he could be convinced either way.

This was a huge decision. He realized at that moment that there was a strong possibility that the game's history was going to be completely determined by his actions in the next few moments. He had the power in his hands to completely change everything. And he knew that for the rest of his life, potentially, he would think back on this moment as either his biggest regret or the best thing he had ever done.

Eventually, he had to choose.

So he did. He went with his gut. It was a selfish choice, he knew, but the rest of the players weren't going to be on his side in the future anyway.

He had to know. He just had to. He'd never be able to live his life in peace again if he never figured out what had happened that day. The fact that he had nearly been killed by a mysterious force would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Would it ever happen again? Was Illfang even involved in what had happened? Even Kirito himself began to doubt what had happened back then.

But he had to figure it out.

Killing the boss as quickly as possible was not necessarily the best way to complete the game. Sometimes, deliberately keeping it alive was better, as counterintuitive as that might seem. By keeping it alive and studying its strange behaviour it might be possible to learn something fundamental about how the game they were all stuck in was programmed. And that information may very well prove critical somewhere down the line.

It could save lives. So many players had already been killed due to rushing into situations with a preconceived set of notions from the beta test and having those notions suddenly proved inaccurate.

So yeah. The players could kill the boss now, and maybe get to the next floor a few days, or even a week faster, but they would have nothing else to show for it. The path Kirito was deciding to go down would delay the players in the short term, but would give them the opportunity to acquire new knowledge and progress everyone's understanding of how the world worked.

Kirito was pretty sure that there wasn't a right or wrong answer to this dilemma. Everyone would have differing opinions. But nobody else's opinion really mattered at that moment because he was the only person in the driver's seat.

It was his choice alone.

And the final nail in the coffin solidifying this choice was a feeling of hope. As long as Illfang remained alive, Kirito still had a chance to solo him in the future. Which was too big of a chance to let slip away.

It could not be overstated how hugely beneficial that xp drop would be. It would practically guarantee his survival when the rest of the players inevitably decided to turn on him somewhere down the line.

He would be too strong to be murdered by someone else afterward, and it would give him so much extra free time. He would not have to spend every spare minute of his time desperately grinding to remain on top of the rest of the players anymore. He could instead spend all of his extra time figuring out how to make potions and how to refine his fighting style. He'd be free to explore new ways to gain strength that did not involve levelling up and getting xp. His spins were a perfect example of that. He had so many more half-thought-out ideas along those lines that if he just had the time to explore them, he could completely revolutionize his whole fighting style.

But he needed that time. The breathing room that successfully soloing a boss would give him. And it would even allow him to gain the strength required to solo more bosses in the future.

It was a window of opportunity that would close forever if he allowed it to.

He couldn't allow it to.

If he let these players take this kill right here, there may never again be a second chance to create the necessary gap between himself and the next strongest player. He'd end up months ahead if he succeeded in that, easily. Perhaps even doubling his level just like that.

Kirito wanted to see his sister again. This meant that he wanted the players to beat the game eventually, sure, but he also wanted to still be alive when they did. And that meant that on an occasion like this, he had to make the selfish choice because nobody else would be watching his back in the future. He had to be strong enough to survive against literally everyone. And this was the only way to do that.

It was all about increasing the odds of his survival in the long run. Even if that meant stealing all the xp that Illfang could give and hoarding it for himself.


Kirito's Hiding skill was finally about to be flexed to its utmost extent. He had never tested out its full range of abilities in a real-world situation, but the time had finally come.

Kirito pressed a single button on his menu, and that set everything up.

His Hiding skill could do so many things. It could turn him invisible, it could mute the noises he made, it could hide his cursor, but it could also hide his name.

A player's name was typically hidden by default, whether a player chose to hide it or not. But a player with the Searching skill could reveal it if they were a high enough level. This naturally would have been a disaster, so Kirito had been hiding it this whole time, just as he had with his cursor.

His Hiding skill had a Global Hide Rate that he could allocate to all of his various abilities. His Mask ability, for example, was used to hide his face. It had a Hide Rate that, when depleted, would disable the ability. But Kirito could control how big that Hide Rate bar was by either lowering or adding Global Hide Rate to it.

He could cut the ability's maximum Hide Rate in half if he wanted to, and reallocate that extra Hide Rate to increase the strength of other abilities. Such as Hiding his cursor. So in some sense, Kirito could control the failure priority of all of his abilities by carefully micromanaging this Global Hide Rate, and how he distributed it across his abilities.

He could set it up so that under the scrutiny of a Searching player, his face will always be revealed before his cursor would. Or vice versa. Or that his name would always be revealed last. There were so many options. He could even make presets with different Global Hide Rate distributions across all of his abilities, and he could set thresholds and basic programs to force his own Hiding abilities to fail early based on certain conditions, and automatically reallocate the freed up Hide Rate to other abilities, even during the middle of a battle.

It was fantastically complicated, but Kirito had had more than enough time to figure it all out. And he was making use of all of that knowledge right at that moment to ensure that no matter what happened, his next actions would never be traced back to his name.

Even if his orange cursor was revealed, it didn't matter. Even if his face was revealed, it might not matter either because he had never revealed it to anyone before so he would not be recognized. Not even Argo had seen his real face. But his name had to remain hidden at all costs. Lots of people knew it, after all. No connection could be made between his name, face, and cursor, and all of Kirito's Global Hide Rate management reflected this.

So when the time finally arrived where he made his decision to interfere with these two players, he was nowhere near as nervous as he could have been. He would remain anonymous throughout, and in the near-impossible situation that his identity was about to be revealed, he could simply teleport out.

Kirito had steeled himself. And this allowed him to do something that he never in a million years would have thought that he'd ever do.

Just as Diabel would have landed the finishing blow on the boss, Kirito utterly clotheslined him.

"No," Kirito stated calmly as he appeared out of thin air.

He took Illfang's side.

These two players had destroyed any possible plan he could have made to end this situation peacefully. So his priority was to now get them to leave under the threat of force. Then he'd lock them outside, take his camera, and leave on his own afterward.

While this act should have guaranteed that he would become an immediate enemy of all the rest of the players, it would not due to one simple fact.

Kirito was still anonymous. These players would learn that someone was working against them for a mysterious reason, but they wouldn't be able to figure out who it was, or why. This could even cause everyone to be much more cautious during the next boss fight due to the possibility of meeting this player again, which could have the accidental side effect of saving even more lives due to the extra preparations they made.

Having a common enemy could do the players some good. It could even redirect the player's ire towards the beta testers toward him instead.

Perhaps it was just a list of excuses justifying his selfishness to get the xp drop from the boss and hoarding it all for himself, but at the very least, depending on how you looked at it, this could be seen as a net gain for everyone.

It certainly made Kirito feel a little better about the whole thing, anyway.

Diabel recovered to his feet, and Kirito kicked him as hard as he could. Diabel crashed into Asuna and the two went tumbling backwards across the room.

Kirito was not letting Illfang die today. Not by these two.

Not yet.

Sugu's face was burned squarely in the center of his mind, serving as a powerful motivator.

Kirito parried Illfang's counterattack and sent the boss flying backwards with it. Taking the opportunity, he then leaped over towards the other two downed players, placing all three of them outside of Illfang's magic range.

Kirito didn't want to have to deal with both Illfang and these two players at the same time.

Illfang froze after all players left his magic radius, as expected, and the boss walked over towards the back wall of the room once again.

Kirito may not know why the boss did that, but it didn't matter. He could still take advantage of whatever mysterious mechanic it was.

Diabel groaned as he sat up.

"What the hell?!" He shouted. "Who―?"

"Did you just punch me?" Diabel interrupted himself. "What the hell were you thinking?! Illfang was a single hit away from death! We had him!"

"Get out," Kirito ordered.

"What?"

"Get out of the room."

"That voice. It's you."

Kirito winced slightly as he hadn't considered that angle in this plan of his. There was a decent chance that his voice would be recognized by this girl. Even after all of his preparations, he did not have the ability to disguise his own voice. And he was nowhere near skilled enough as an actor to pull that off convincingly on his own. So even though he was wearing a pretty nondescript cloak that was not recognizable, he could still be recognized by anyone that had heard his voice before.

He was going to need to be extremely careful about who was in the room whenever he decided to speak. Thankfully, however, he had not told this girl anything about who he was. So even though she recognized his voice, she had no way of knowing his identity since he hadn't given her his name. The best she could do is recognize him as the same guy she had talked to a couple of days ago.

A group of minions tried to attack Kirito from behind. While Illfang himself may have gone over to the far side of the room, the minions had not, and were still rearing for a fight. As they arrived, Kirito killed them all in an instant with a spin. He landed on his feet as if nothing happened.

"Woah." Diabel made his amazement at the casual slaughter of what to him appeared to be challenging monsters, clear. "Where the hell were you during the raid?"

Kirito didn't respond.

"Why did you stop us?" Asuna asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" Diabel replied. "It's the Last Attack Bonus. He wants it for himself."

"The Last Attack Bonus?" The girl questioned. "What's that?"

The next set of minions approached Kirito from behind, so he immediately made his move. He abruptly hurled a pair of swords at the two players causing them to flinch. The blades skimmed just past their faces, barely missing them. This was intentional. In the instant that they blinked and turned away, Kirito activated Hide and vanished. Neither of them saw him disappear with the ability directly with their eyes, giving him the chance to slip away. The minions now set their sights on the two remaining visible players, ignoring Kirito.

"What the hell?! Are you trying to kill us?!" Asuna shouted, enraged at the sudden attack. It was only then that she noticed that the player was gone. "W-where did he go?!"

"Look out!" Diabel shouted. "The minions!"

The girl growled as she was forced to parry the first mace sent her way.

Kirito summoned the swords he had thrown, back to his hands, after jumping behind a pillar. He had not wanted to demonstrate his Hide ability right in front of their eyes in order to sow the maximum amount of confusion in these two that he could, which was why he had thrown the weapons at them in the first place. This had disguised his activation of the skill. When they had opened their eyes to see that he was no longer there, they would not be able to figure out exactly what had happened, then. It would keep them guessing.

He hoped that now that they knew he was there and was willing to stop them from getting the kill, that this would be enough for them to retreat for now. Things wouldn't escalate any further if they just took the signal and left.

As the two players re-engaged the oncoming minions, Diabel began to explain his theory to Asuna.

"The Last Attack Bonus is a rare drop! Whoever lands the last hit on the boss will receive it! This guy must be after it!"

"Are you telling me that he stopped us for a selfish reason like that?! Just so that he could land the last hit?!"

"I'm saying that it's likely."

"But he didn't even take part in the raid! We did all the work! Where did he even come from?!"

"He must have followed us here and used the Hiding skill to turn invisible. Then he waited for his opportunity to strike."

"That jerk! I'll kill him!"

Kirito grinned after overhearing their conversation.

The Last Attack Bonus was usually pretty good, but it was not even close to being enough to justify his current actions. If he wanted that, he could have just bought it off of whoever ended up getting it. But he supposed that since there had been multiple instances back in the beta test of a player trying to snipe the Last Attack Bonus, that it was at least a plausible theory as to why he was doing this. So it made sense why these two had thought that.

"Let it go, Asuna!" Diabel exclaimed.

"What?! Why?!"

"As long as Illfang dies, it doesn't matter who lands the last hit. All that matters is that we win. So just stay back here with me and let him finish it off. I just want the fight to end."

"Still…!"

Kirito watched them continue to fight the minions. They didn't understand what his intentions were and assumed that he was trying to kill the boss himself. There was no way that they would believe anything that he said, so he had no intention of even trying to explain what his real plans were. Even if they knew, they would still probably try to get in his way.

So he intended to say nothing to them. He would not try to get them to see his side of things, and there would be no negotiation. Kirito was going to do everything in his power to ensure that things went his way, even if that meant stopping these two himself.

He took a glance at Illfang while the two other players were occupied.

Another crazy idea struck him. Since the two other players seemed to be waiting for him to finish off Illfang, they were hanging back. So Kirito would not be interrupted for the next several moments at least, giving him the opportunity to test this idea out.

Kirito walked over to Illfang with his camouflage still active, ensuring that he would not be seen, pulled out an HP potion, and poured it out over Illfang's foot.

Now there was something that he hadn't expected to be doing today.

He had no idea what would happen when he did it. Nobody had ever tried healing a boss before and furthermore, nobody had tried healing anyone without getting them to directly ingest the potion itself. So Kirito didn't know if there were any healing effects from pouring a potion out over someone's skin. He was testing both of those things out at once while the other two players were distracted.

Illfang needed to be out of the danger zone.

Even though Kirito was right next to the boss, Illfang did not see him, as his gaze was focused on the other two players in the distance. And it also seemed as if Kirito's healing of the boss didn't register as an aggressive action. So Illfang made no attempt to wildly thrash around either to try and find out what invisible player was doing it.

The boss just let it happen. And it worked. Illfang's HP began to rise, so Kirito pulled out another potion, and emptied it out as well.

He had a ton of them stocked up.


Diabel and Asuna continued to battle the minions for a while, both of them still quite irritated at the recent turn of events. But since they had both agreed that they just wanted Illfang to die, they were willing to let the new player have the Last Attack Bonus. In the meantime, since they had gotten so used to defeating the minions, they started to have a conversation in the middle of the battle.

"So your name is Diabel, right?"

"Yeah. It is. I overheard yours earlier. Asuna right?"

"Yeah."

"You're pretty good."

"How are you still alive?"

"What do you mean?"

"We all saw you die earlier."

Diabel blinked.

"What?" He asked, baffled.

"It's true," Asuna replied. "When you tried to finish off Illfang in front of everyone like that and he hit you and you went flying, you disappeared."

"What are you talking about? I didn't die!"

"What happened then? You vanished as soon as you hit the ground. Everyone saw it."

"I... vanished?"

"Mm."

"I have no idea what would cause that." He had no idea at all. That didn't even make sense to him.

"It's why we left," Asuna explained. "We thought that you died so we retreated."

"I see. I have no idea what happened then."

"A lot of strange things happened today."

"No kidding. But at least it'll be over soon."

"He sure is taking his sweet time, though," Asuna grumbled in irritation.

Eventually, after a few more minutes of fending off the minions, they started to realize that something was wrong.

"What is that guy doing?" Diabel asked, rhetorically. "Why is he taking so long? Illfang's almost dead."

"Well, he better hurry up!" Asuna shouted. "These things are annoying!"

Diabel took a look back at Illfang's HP and noticed something alarming. His heart lurched in his chest as he noticed it increasing visibly. Far faster than it should have been on its own. Illfang was almost back up to 5%.

"Asuna! Illfang's HP!"

"What about it?!"

"It's healing!"

"What?! How?!"

"I don't know! But we have to stop it!"

"Right!"

They batted aside the few remaining minions with ease and charged forwards again toward the boss.


Kirito noticed the development and immediately stopped what he was doing. He sprinted back over to intercept them before they got too close to the boss. He did not want Illfang to start attacking just yet, so he needed all visible players to remain outside of that magic range.

He shook his head in disappointment and stuck his leg out, tripping Diabel to the ground, causing Kirito's camouflage to deactivate again.

"I thought I told you two to leave."

"You again?!" Asuna shouted. "Stop interfering! Can't you see that Illfang is healing! If you aren't going to finish it off then we will! You're taking way too long!"

Seeing that his refusal to explain anything wasn't doing him any favours, Kirito decided to take the next step.

"I'm not trying to kill the boss," Kirito admitted.

Such a confession was bound to turn both players against him, but Kirito was prepared for that. He was hoping that the prospect of a PVP battle between them would cause them both to back down.

"What the hell does that mean?!"

Diabel slowly stood up, and a steely look went across his face as the reality of the situation started to become apparent to him.

"Asuna," he interrupted her tirade.

"What?!"

"Look at his hand."

Kirito took in a deep breath and sighed, gripping the handle of his sword a little tighter. He was preparing himself for what would no doubt be a pitched battle. These two were starting to understand the situation, and that would cause them to either try to fight him or try to run away. He was hoping for the latter.

"What about it?!" She took a look and noticed a health potion there. "That's an HP potion, right?"

"It is," Diabel confirmed.

"What's so important about it?" Asuna asked.

"He's been healing Illfang with them."

"W-what?" She stuttered in disbelief, as the situation became clear to her.

"He's not trying to kill the boss," Diabel explained. "He's trying to kill us."

Kirito blinked. So they still didn't quite understand what his intentions were. But he could still make this work. He needed to correct that assumption, though. If they thought he was trying to kill them, they may think that there was no choice but to fight for their lives. He needed to emphasize that they were free to leave at any time and that that was all that he really wanted from them. He didn't want either of them to get desperate and think that their lives were on the line.

There was an intense moment of silence as the two shell-shocked players faced the unknown hooded player before them with fear and uncertainty clear in their eyes.

Kirito decided to clarify their positions to them. He broke the silence with a chuckle.

Asuna immediately narrowed her eyes, recognizing that laugh from the last time they had met. She knew that it was directed at her again. He was laughing at her!

"What's so funny?!"

"Sorry," Kirito apologized. But mentally, he filed away the fact that she seemed to not like being laughed at for future reference. "It's just funny how stupid you are, is all. At any moment either of you can turn around and leave. If I wanted you dead I'd have killed you already. I already told you what I want. I want you two to get out."

"Why?!"

"It doesn't matter," Kirito said.

"If we do leave, Illfang will survive!" Diabel pointed out.

"Yeah, he will. That's the point."

"Why do you want that?"

"Why are you doing this?" Asuna asked. "Didn't you tell me earlier to beat Kayaba at his own game? Why are you suddenly trying to stop me now?!" She had been utterly mesmerized and inspired by the advice that this person had given to her, so it had come as a shock that he now seemed to be her enemy.

Kirito didn't answer. He didn't think that the girl would understand that killing floor bosses quickly was not necessarily the best way to win the game in the end. Sometimes, taking a step back and learning something fundamental about their actual circumstances was more important. Studying Illfang's behaviour could reveal fundamental truths about how the game was programmed, which could, in turn, offer valuable insight into future bosses. This could save more lives in the long run even if it did come at the cost of extending their collective time inside the game slightly.

It was ironic. Everybody there was fighting for their beliefs. Kirito wanted information, and these two wanted a victory so that they could advance to the next floor. Even at that moment, Kirito wasn't sure about who was right. He knew that he was still pretty much on the fence about the whole thing. The only thing that had tugged him over to the side he now stood on was the possibility of getting the chance to solo Illfang later on if things went his way. It might have been a selfish and paranoid desire, but he saw it as justified to ensure his long term survival, and to be able to meet with his sister again.

There was no way that he could get them to understand his point of view, however, as Illfang had not demonstrated his ranged attack to them. So they did not know that the boss was hiding something that was worth investigating like this, and they certainly would not believe anything that Kirito said.

So he said nothing.

Instead of answering, Kirito hurled a pair of swords at them again, causing them to flinch. This disguised his activation of Hide once again.

"Urgh! Stop doing that!"

Kirito vanished just in time for the next wave of minions to attack them once again.

"You know this guy?" Diabel asked as he was forced into defending himself from the minions.

"Y-yes. At least, I think. He… helped me. Saved my life."

"Why is he trying to stop us then? Who is he?"

"I don't know! He never told me his name!"

The two players looked up just in time to see Illfang's HP increase again. While they were distracted with the minions, the hooded player had evidently taken the opportunity to start healing the boss once more.

"God dammit!" Diabel raged. "I won't let you take this victory away from us!"

Diabel glared, opened his menu, and activated his Searching skill, having fully understood how this player was vanishing from his sight. Since there was almost no cover in the room, and since he was decently levelled with the skill, Diabel was able to almost instantly shatter the camouflage of the hidden player.


Kirito cursed.

There was almost no cover in the room and the surroundings were clear as day, rendering his camouflage far more fragile than he was used to it being. He would not be able to heavily rely upon it.

Thankfully, however, it was only really his camouflage that suffered from this drawback. The bright light in the room didn't weaken his cursor or name hiding abilities. Which sort of made sense. Hiding a cursor was supposed to be analogous to being able to hide your true self from others, which didn't really depend on what was going on in the environment. It only really depended on how you acted and on how you carried yourself. Bright lights and dark rooms played no part in that.

But this forced him to make another tough decision. Kirito could increase the strength of his camouflage by adding more Global Hide Rate to it in order to make it more effective and to try and compensate for the environmental effects, but by doing so, he would weaken his other abilities. Making it much more likely for his cursor, name, or face to be revealed.

There were two choices. The all or nothing approach, where he bet everything on his camouflage, which would successfully hide both his cursor and his name if it never went down, or he could take the safe approach, which involved leaving his camouflage's Hide Rate as is and keeping most of his Global Hide Rate tied up in his more important abilities.

He chose the latter option. Not having an effective camouflage would make defeating these two a bit harder, but he could not risk his name being known, especially now that Diabel had revealed that he had a decently high levelled Searching skill.

Kirito would need to spend most of his effort hiding his identity, rather than hiding his appearance.

Thankfully, however, neither of these players had seemed to notice his missing cursor yet. Or if they did, they believed that he was hiding it only to avoid being spotted from a distance. Cursors were generally pretty easy to see, so players that wanted to remain hidden but did not intend to use a full camouflage to do so would hide their cursors and take cover instead, so this explanation was plausible. They didn't seem to jump to the conclusion that he was orange just yet.

He wasn't sure what they would do if they found out, either. It'd either prove advantageous, or disastrous. They'd either run out of fear of him being a PKer, or they would try to capture or kill him for the same reason. The situation might destabilize either way, so Kirito did not want to reveal that piece of information just yet.

Illfang suddenly noticed Kirito now that his camouflage was down and he had been revealed, and immediately swung at him.

Kirito leaped out of the way just in time.

"Asuna, you finish off Illfang! I'll handle this guy!"

"Right!"


Diabel's gaze zeroed in on the hooded player.

He had immediately noticed how suspicious the player was. No cursor, no name, he couldn't even see the player's face. This guy was hiding absolutely everything that he could about himself. And to Diabel's secret amazement and frustration, his Searching skill was not high enough to get through these protections.

This person was unbelievably suspicious and sly. But he was familiar with this type of player. Diabel had seen a few others who had tried to go to such lengths to hide themselves for a multitude of different reasons. And there was one common factor that they seemed to all share.

When you spent all your time hiding away from the world, refusing to stand up and face it on its terms, you were weak. And he didn't even mean that in a bad way. Lots of people were weak. All he really meant by it was that these sorts of players tended to not be suited to combat. Because if they were good at combat, then there was no reason to hide. So he attacked, expecting a quick victory. Few players were able to stand up to him when he got serious, after all. And someone who spent all their time hiding rather than training would be easy to beat.

Since Diabel had been attacked by this player already, he knew that the player's cursor was orange, hidden or not. There was no other way around that. A green player, when they attacked another green player, became orange. That was just how it worked. So when he had been punched that first time, this unknown player's cursor had become orange a moment later. With this in mind, even though Diabel was now going to attack this guy back, he knew that his own cursor would remain green since the system didn't care about what happened to criminals. Green players could kill an orange player if they wanted to and still remain green.

So he would not have to worry about the colour of his cursor changing, even though he had been prepared for that if it meant securing a victory over Illfang. Orange cursors that were given due to a fight that did not result in a death were reverted back to normal anywhere between a few hours and a few days later which wasn't that big of a deal if it meant defeating the boss.

The players needed a win to show everyone who had lost hope that it was still possible to beat the game. So he was willing to go orange for a little while so that he could capture and interrogate this guy.

But it wouldn't be necessary. This player had struck first, so he was the criminal, and there would be no consequences to either him or his new friend Asuna if they decided to fight back.

Diabel lunged forward.

Things went south instantly.

Literally every single expectation he had had about this player's skill level was shattered in an instant. This player was far, far more skilled than Diabel had expected, and so he had had his ass handed to him in about two seconds. Diabel's attacks were countered with ease, and he found himself completely incapable of defending himself against a player that was this strong.

He had massively underestimated the guy, and he internally berated himself for doing so. He had seen a demonstration of this player's capabilities earlier on against that group of minions, where he had done that weird spinning move to kill them all at once. But Diabel had mostly written it off because in most cases, being really good at defeating monsters didn't translate over to being good at PVP encounters.

It was clear now that this player, like Diabel himself, had quite a bit of combat experience against other players, which made him believe that he was fighting against another beta tester.

He could see no other explanation.


Kirito casually batted away all of Diabel's attacks, knocked him aside, and took the opportunity to leap in front of Asuna as she tried to pass by him and run over towards the boss.

To her credit, she did make an instinctive attempt to defend herself, but it was not even close to enough. Kirito dodged her counterattack, grabbed her arm, and punched her as hard as he could in the stomach, folding her over like a lawn chair. Winded, she was completely unable to avoid the spin kick that struck her in the face a moment later, launching her backwards into a pillar.

Kirito had grown to love his Acrobatics skill. He could do all sorts of crazy spins and kicks with it. The sheer versatility it afforded him was well worth the use of a skill slot.

The girl's rapier dropped right into Kirito's hand as she was sent flying away.

"Asuna!" Diabel shouted in concern.

Diabel found himself impaled an instant later by Asuna's own rapier, as Kirito had whipped it at him, blade first.

"Hrrk―!"

Then he, like Asuna, was spin kicked in the face, launching him backwards into the same pillar that Asuna had just been launched into. Diabel bounced off the concrete wall and landed squarely on top of the girl, knocking her right back to the ground after she had tried to stand up.

"This is the last time I'm going to tell you," Kirito warned. "Leave this room, or I'll make you leave."

Kirito was not playing around anymore. His future was literally at stake here. Whether or not he ever made it out of the game could depend on whether or not he succeeded in soloing Illfang. The way he saw it, these two were getting in the way of him ever seeing his family again. So he was starting to run out of patience.

"B-bastard!" Diabel shouted, as he sat up and collected himself.

"Diabel," a weak, muffled sounding voice called out from under him.

The knight looked down.

Almost all of Diabel's body weight was being supported by his left arm. That just happened to be how he had landed. He was sprawled out on top of the girl almost in a one-handed push-up position. The majority of his weight was being propped up by that single appendage.

Incidentally, this arm was planted directly on the back of Asuna's skull, which was causing all of his weight to firmly plant her face into the stone floor.

He was inadvertently grinding her face into the concrete.

This, naturally, made it extremely difficult for her to speak. And she was even further hampered due to the fact that she was still winded and struggling to catch her breath from the earlier punch to her stomach.

"S-sorry!" He apologized as he frantically got up off of her.

Asuna sat up with a groan.

Diabel lent her his hand to help her stand up.

She ignored it and stood up herself. She took the next few moments to dust herself off, before finally turning to face him.

She looked at him for a few long moments with a frown clear on her face.

She definitely wasn't happy.

"I didn't mean to do that, sorry," Diabel explained after a long moment of silence.

"Good," she replied with a terrifying smile. "Because if you had we'd be fighting right now."

Diabel gulped.

But then Asuna's glare seemed to morph into an expression of concern and surprise.

"Um…" she hummed in confusion upon noticing her weapon sticking out of Diabel's gut.

"What is it?" Diabel asked, seemingly oblivious.

"Your stomach."

"My stomach?"

Asuna pointed down, and Diabel looked.

Asuna's rapier had pierced clean through his body. Diabel's eyes were wide at the sight.

"A-are you okay?" Asuna asked.

"I-I'm fine, I think." Diabel reached down with a shaky hand and grabbed the handle of the rapier. Then he yanked it out with only a wince. "That actually didn't hurt too bad."

"Really?"

"Yeah. My HP is fine too. I'm still good to continue."

"Same. We'll handle him together," she said.

"Are you sure? Fighting a player is a lot different from fighting a monster. And this guy is really good."

"If we work together, we'll be able to handle him," she insisted.

Diabel considered the idea for a few moments but ended up relenting.

"Okay. You go right, I'll go left."

"Right."

The two of them looked up just in time to see the hooded player charging straight toward them.

But their jaws dropped in disbelief at what they saw right behind him. While they had been having their conversation, the hooded player had lured Illfang and all the minions and was now leading them straight toward the two of them, head-on.


Kirito had switched up his strategy. While the two of them had been distracted, he had decided to take things up a notch. Rather than trying to keep Illfang far away from the conflict, he decided to make use of the boss to try and scare them out of the room.

Kirito had healed the boss enough with his potions that it was no longer in danger of being killed with only a few more hits. So the risk of Illfang being defeated had been reduced by a lot. So Kirito could use the boss to help him out.

Hopefully, they would see that the situation was hopeless now that they no longer had to fight just him, but Illfang and the minions as well at the same time.

At the last moment before reaching the two other stunned players, Kirito radically increased his speed and jumped over them. He landed on the side of the pillar and did a wall-run up towards the top of it. He vaulted himself on top of the horizontal slabs, leaving all the monsters and Illfang himself to attack the two players below.

"God dammit! Are you trying to kill us?!"

Neither of them would actually die here, Kirito would make sure of it. If it looked like they were about to, Kirito had every intention of saving them. But such an intervention probably would not be needed as these two players were definitely skilled enough to survive against these monsters. They probably wouldn't win against them, but they would keep themselves alive until they felt overwhelmed.

Just in case, he pulled out a pair of teleport crystals and considered another idea.

He didn't have very many of them in his inventory, but he had bought a few. And for a couple of moments, he considered whether or not he should toss two of them down to the players.

'Later,' he eventually decided. Once it looked like they were becoming overwhelmed and only if they found themselves unable to retreat. He'd toss the crystals down only then. He didn't want them to just pocket the items and continue fighting like nothing happened since the crystals were so rare.

"Of course not," Kirito replied, reiterating the same point once again. "I just want you to retreat."

"I refuse!" Diabel cried. "Not until Illfang is dead!"

These players definitely knew how to annoy a person.

"Illfang isn't dying today," Kirito declared. "It's about time that you two accepted that."

"You're wrong!" Asuna shouted. "Here's what's actually going to happen, mister! We're going to defeat you, kill the boss, and then make you answer our questions!"

Kirito chuckled again. Because there was no way that that was going to happen. Even if it did look like he was about to be captured, he had teleport crystals on him. He'd have to be paralyzed for them to even stand a chance at succeeding. And even then, his crystals were hotkeyed, specifically for such an occasion. If it looked like he was about to become paralyzed by a weapon or potion, he was gone.

Asuna's entire face went red in fury, after hearing him laughing.

"Stop laughing at me!"

This girl really did not like being laughed at, Kirito noticed. If he ever wanted to get her to slip up during a fight, he could just point and laugh at her.

With this thought in mind, he decided that maybe this moment was the perfect opportunity to give the under-handed tactic a try.


A few minutes of intense combat went by. Diabel and Asuna continued battling the monsters that had been forced on them, frantically trying to come up with a plan all the while.

"Ugh! This guy is infuriating! He's just watching us struggle down here!"

Asuna chanced a glance up to the top of the pillars where she knew the player was sitting, and couldn't believe what she saw.

There the player was, sitting casually with his legs hanging over the edge, kicking back and forth through the air without a care in the world. There was also a drink in his hand that he was sipping on while he watched her fight.

Her whole body locked up as an indescribable, righteous fury took over her. The reaction was so intense that she completely missed one of the minion's attacks, causing it to slip through her guard and knock her down to the ground.

"Asuna! Keep focused! Just ignore him!"

She regained her footing and stood back up just in time to defend herself from the followup attacks.

"How can I possibly do that when he's just sitting up there watching?! We're fighting for our lives down here and he's just… lounging casually!"

"Man, you guys are so lazy," Kirito called down to them before taking a sip of his drink.

Asuna's fists clenched so hard at that comment that her knuckles went completely white and it felt as if she nearly busted the handle off of her own rapier.

Her rage was so intense that once again, she let her guard down, giving ample opportunity for Illfang to send her flying away with a swing from his giant blade.

"Asuna! I know it's hard, but you have to ignore him! He's trying to make you slip up!"

"Well, it's working!" She exclaimed as she got back up to her feet. "I have never wanted to kill somebody this badly before!"

Kirito chuckled.

Asuna snapped.

"I'm going to rip your throat out and skin you alive with my fingernails!" She shouted up at him.

"That's an image," Kirito commented. "Maybe I'd believe you if you weren't getting your butt kicked by minions."

As if on queue, she was tackled to the ground by two of them, causing her to scream in outrage.


Kirito's strategy was working wonders. The girl was so easy to rile up. He barely even needed to put any effort into it.

She did not have the ability to hone all of her anger into a sharpened edge and use it as a weapon. Her rage just caused her to become sloppy. So a few well-placed comments was all it took to force both players onto the back foot.

Diabel couldn't fend off all the monsters at once on his own, so when Asuna faltered, so did he. They weren't even able to keep up on their own anymore, and their HP was dropping more and more as time went on.

A few comments were all it took to cause them to start losing. It was incredibly effective.

But this strategy also had its disadvantages.

It made Kirito nervous for one. He wanted them to slip up, but he did not want to be responsible for any player deaths. So despite his casual posture, his eyes were locked onto every single detail in the ensuing battle, and his entire body felt like a compressed spring, ready to fly into action in an instant. If it looked like anyone was about to be killed, he was going to drop down and save them both without hesitation.

In the meantime, however, he was constantly trying to figure out how to get them both to retreat.

Kirito glanced over at the wide-open boss room door.

That was the other disadvantage. The door was still wide open. And it was only a matter of time before another player came by and noticed this battle going on.

Kirito was confident that he could deal with these two players. He had already analyzed and broken down their fighting styles and had rough estimates on their skill levels.

Kirito had suspicions that Diabel was a beta tester going by the surprising level of competency that he had displayed in their brief engagement.

The thing was, PVP was not common in this game now that death was real, and especially since it was still so early on. Duels seemed to happen every now and then, but the PVP scene had been far more active back in the beta. So there were not too many skilled combatants out there yet. Most elected to train against monsters, which on such an early floor as this, were dumb and couldn't really strategize or work together.

For that reason, most players would find themselves outmatched in an actual battle with an intelligent opponent that could strategize. Few other players would be able to duel against someone like Kirito, who had spent a lot of time in the past fighting against other people. He had the experience. Diabel seemed to have it too, but the rapier user did not.

She had a ton of natural talent. It was remarkable to see, actually. Kirito had never seen a new player get so skilled, so quickly. He'd even go so far as to say that she had more natural talent than Kirito himself did. In the distant future, she would be a force of nature.

But right now, all of that potential was just that. Potential. It was dormant, and she did not have the experience to make use of it to its full extent. As a result, in a straight fight, she would be no match for him. She'd probably put up a good fight against someone like Diabel, but she'd probably lose even against him. Diabel was Kirito's biggest threat at the moment. Asuna needed more time to develop her skills before really becoming one herself. Especially since she was so easy to manipulate with a few well-placed comments.

But the point was, even together, Kirito was confident that he could beat them both. But what if another player came by and walked into the room? What if two players did?

Then the results would become far more uncertain.

So even though Kirito looked relaxed at the moment, he was anything but. His plans were still precariously perched on the edge of a razor and all it would take is a single stroke of bad luck to topple them over. He was by no means safe yet.

He needed to find a way to speed things along that didn't involve getting these two killed.

He needed to come up with a plan.


"We need to come up with a plan!" Asuna shouted

Illfang was no longer only a few hits away from death. It would take several uninterrupted minutes for the two of them to finish it off now, and a coordinated attack.

"I've got an idea!" Diabel declared as he parried one of Illfang's attacks.

"What is it?!"

"I've been watching the boss carefully! Earlier on, do you remember how he was just standing still at the back wall, ignoring us?!"

"Yeah! I noticed that too?! What was up with that?!"

"I have a hunch! When I give the signal, make a break for the far wall! If we get far enough away from the boss, he should leave us alone while we deal with these minions! If we do that, he'll either wander off to the side of the room or even better, he might even go after this other guy!"

Asuna smirked.

"Good! Give that jerk a taste of his own medicine!"


Kirito frowned, having heard everything.

He took one last sip of his drink before tossing the empty glass to the side, causing it to shatter somewhere off to his right.

He was going to need to jump down now. Break time was over.


"Ready?!" Diabel asked.

"Yeah!"

"Now!"

The two of them sprinted toward the far wall as fast as they could. They passed outside of Illfang's attack range and the boss immediately stopped chasing after them. Rather than turn around and go after Kirito, however, Illfang started walking towards the back wall.

This confused both of them, at first.

"What the―? Where is it going? Why isn't it going after that other guy?"

"Oh no, you don't!" Diabel shouted. He frantically scanned the environment with Search but revealed nothing.

Asuna picked up on the fact that the hooded player was missing a moment later.

"What the―?! Where did he go?!"

"He's gone invisible again! Coward! Come out and face us!"

"This guy makes me want to rip my hair out!" Asuna shouted. "Just like that stupid Rat!"

Kirito raised his brow from his hiding spot after hearing the familiar moniker. Evidently, this girl had met Argo at some point and had been graced with Argo's Argo-ness.

Kirito grinned, thankful that he had not been the only person that had been targeted by the info dealer in the past. The rapier user had also been. He started to wonder about what the story there, was. He'd bet it was funny.

Just as Asuna finished complaining about her 'friend', they got swarmed by the minions again, forcing them into yet another tedious battle.

"I hate these things so much!" The girl raged.

"Asuna! Do you think you can hold them off for a few seconds on your own?! I need to break this guy's camouflage again!"

"Leave it to me! Drag him out here!"

Diabel ran away from the group of minions, leaving Asuna to fend them all off on her own. He quickly started scanning the room.

"Where the hell did you go?!" He took a considering glance around the room and quickly found the only possible place that a player could hide. Behind one of the pillars. He ran around the room and looked behind each one as quickly as he could. Eventually, he got lucky. His interface gave him a pinging noise, and he grinned.

Kirito's camouflage shattered a moment later.

Diabel smirked.


"You guys are really annoying," Kirito complained as his camouflage went down, irritation clear in his voice.

"I don't want to hear that from you!" Asuna shouted back at him from the opposite side of the room, having overheard the comment despite the distance between them.

"There's nowhere to hide in this room, buddy!" Diabel pointed out. "You might have given me some trouble if there were any shadowy corners to cower in, but you're stuck here out in the open with no cover! I hope you enjoy fighting minions as much as we do! Because you're about to get a whole lot of them!"

Kirito looked to the side just in time to see Asuna run by him with all the minions trailing behind her.

Kirito looked back at Diabel and saw him running away.

Kirito was now the closest target, so all the minions turned and went after him.

"Asuna! Now's our chance!"

"Right!"

The two players charged over towards Illfang while Kirito was distracted.


Kirito could have ended the fight with the minions almost immediately, but a new plan formed in his mind, and he stayed his hand.

Illfang was near the entrance to the room. So Kirito allowed the two players to run towards the boss because they were now doing most of the work in getting towards the open door. This would potentially give Kirito the opportunity to toss them both outside and lock them out with the switch. So he watched the two players out of the corner of his eye as they started battling the boss again, and he felt a surge of excitement as their battle immediately started to drift closer to the door.

Now was his chance.

He spun, annihilating all the minions, and activated Hide.


Diabel and Asuna tried to kill Illfang as quickly as possible. Without having to deal with the minions, and with all of their previous experience working together, they found themselves immediately on a roll. Illfang's HP started plummeting. They switched back and forth seamlessly, and Illfang didn't stand a chance.

They got him down to about 2% when everything went wrong again.

Something struck Asuna from behind, and she was launched over towards the door.

"Asuna!" Diabel shouted after her in concern. But he could not go after her due to Illfang bearing down on him. He could do nothing to help and needed to exert all his effort into just staying alive.

Asuna landed and tumbled across the stone floor.

She managed to stop her momentum relatively quickly, however, and landed in a crouch.

She turned around just in time to get a boot to the face, knocking her right back down to the ground. She was nailed in the stomach, winding her once again, and was sent flying backwards as if she were a soccer ball. She landed and started rolling again.

This time, she wasn't even given the chance to breathe as she felt herself get kicked yet again before she had even stopped rolling.

The unknown player was on her again in an instant, not giving her any time to collect herself.

She tried to put her hand on the ground to stabilize herself so that she could stand up, but it was immediately kicked out from under her causing her to collapse onto her face. Then she felt a hand grab her by her hair, and start to violently drag her across the floor.

Asuna immediately reached up to grab at the offending hand to try and get the player to release her.

Her head was yanked to the side and she was backhanded across the face for her efforts, completely stunning her and making her see stars. Kirito pulled her hair harder and finally used it as a handle to drag her outside the room.


Kirito dragged her, kicking and screaming, all the way out of the boss room and into the labyrinth outside, picking up her rapier along the way with his other hand and looping it through his belt.

She was shouting expletives at him the whole time, but Kirito had mostly tuned her out as he focused on his destination.

Since he was only one person, there was no way to drag out both players simultaneously. So he was forced to do so, one at a time.

There wasn't really any particular reason why he had chosen Asuna as his first target. She had simply been the closest to the door. If Diabel had been there instead, then Kirito would be dragging his ass across the floor at that moment instead.

"You jerk!" Asuna shouted, continuing her long-winded rant. "The second you let me go I'm gonna―!"

Kirito bitchslapped her.

"Shut up," Kirito replied. "Nobody cares."

He had had just about enough of her yelling, and it was giving him a headache.

Asuna gasped in astonishment at the rough treatment. Nobody had ever done anything like this to her before, so she had no idea how to respond to it.

"Wha―?! How dare you?!"

Kirito yanked her hair again, throwing her off her balance. She let out this adorable, cute-sounding cry that made Kirito feel like he had just kicked a puppy, but it wasn't enough to make him stop.

It helped a lot that this was a virtual world. As it was, there were pretty much no consequences to beating the crap out of someone. There were pain limiters, there was no such thing as permanent injuries, and players would recover from anything in less than an hour provided their HP was above 0. That was all that mattered. So the way Kirito saw it, he could be doing much, much worse to this girl than he currently was and still have a clean conscience. If anything, he was being polite.

The rules that applied in the real world just didn't apply here. It was the most PG-13 concept that he had ever seen. All the violence had been stripped from violence, reducing any physical confrontation to, essentially, the equivalent of a pillow fight.

With complete control over her head, the girl could do almost nothing to resist what Kirito was doing to her.

She definitely tried doing something, but every time that she struggled, Kirito would yank her hair again, and kick her feet out from under her, putting her again at his mercy.

If she had had some time to think and strategize, there might have been a way for her to figure out a way to get out from under his iron grip, but she had never considered being placed in a situation like this one before. Where her own hair was being used to restrict her movements. So no obvious solutions appeared in her mind.

Kirito himself could think of a few options that she could have tried. If she could manage to get her menu open, she would easily be able to summon her rapier back to her hands and cause some problems that way. But this was an option that was not usually obvious to newer players, especially in the heat of the moment like this, so there was a pretty good chance that she wouldn't think of it. Even if she did, Kirito had countermeasures ready, but they weren't needed.

Because she didn't think of it.

She also couldn't get her feet under her to support her weight, so she had no control over where they were headed. She was being dragged in much the same way that a giant bag of flour would be. She was mostly sprawled out on the ground facing backwards in a weird sort of crab-walk, struggling to get her feet under her. So she couldn't see what was in front of them since her gaze was fixed in the opposite direction.

It also didn't help that she only had about twenty seconds or so to act. That covered the whole period of time in which Kirito had dragged her all the way to his intended destination.

It just wasn't enough time for her to think of anything.

Asuna managed to crane her neck around and spotted a massive staircase in front of them.

The boss room was located at the top of a huge set of stairs that took several minutes to climb. She had just been dragged right to the top of them.

Her eyes widened as the other player's plan for her immediately became apparent.

"Let go of me right now you ass!" She desperately exclaimed, more than a little afraid at what she believed was about to happen.

Kirito didn't reply. Instead, he roughly dragged her up to her feet and picked her up in his arms. He lifted her completely off her feet and suspended her high above his head in a cheesy imitation of some sort of wrestling move.

Asuna's heart sank at the sight before her. Suspended high into the air, completely powerless, looking down a seemingly endless flight of stairs.

She was terrified.

"Don't you dare―!"

Kirito chucked her down the staircase.

Asuna screamed.


Kirito had put in a ton of thought into how he could get these two players to leave the room. Unfortunately, however, he couldn't seem to find any magic bullet solutions.

Force the girl to teleport somehow? Wouldn't work. If he pinned this girl down and tried to get her to use a teleport crystal she could just refuse and that would be it. There was no way to teleport another player by force against their will. It had to be voluntary. All he could do is provide her with the crystal.

Force feed her a paralysis potion? She would struggle mightily to resist, but it could end up working in the end. It would not be easy, though. It would be a messy situation that would involve him having to rough her up an uncomfortable amount, in advance. It served as a decent backup option, however.

Instead, he selected his third option. Drag her to the staircase leading to the boss room and toss her down it. This would buy him at least a couple of minutes of time before she came back. Enough time for him to deal with the other player.

He had also wanted to see this girl get thrown down a flight of stairs ever since he had first met her back when she had been launching kobolds around. So this plan had the added bonus of being the funniest idea he had had as well.

So he picked it.

He watched her tumble down the stairs for a few moments and let out a chuckle at the sight. It was easily one of the highlights of his day so far, so he took a moment or two to enjoy it before finally getting back to business.

Just before turning back around to head back to the boss room, he pulled out the girl's rapier and tossed it down the stairs after her.


Asuna's heart dropped into her stomach at the sudden feeling of weightlessness and she tried to get her body to move to brace herself for the impact. But it wasn't enough to stop her momentum.

Her surroundings quickly spiralled out of control.

Immediately, she picked up speed as she started tumbling down the massive staircase. She went faster and faster until she couldn't make out what was going on anymore. Everything in her field of vision was just spinning uncontrollably as she continued falling down the stairs.

At some point she face-planted on one of the stone steps, causing a massive force to reverberate through her skull. It concussed her, causing her ears to ring. After that, she lost all sense of direction.

For some time afterwards, it felt like she was being beaten up from all directions. It was totally disorienting and she couldn't follow any of it.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she finally came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the staircase.

A few moments later, her rapier came clattering down the stairs behind her. It bounced a few more times and came to a stop about ten meters away from her.

Almost a full minute passed by before her ears finally stopped ringing, and her mind finally rebooted.

The first thought that went through her head once it was clear was that she was absolutely amazed at how little pain she was in, relatively speaking. If any of what she had just gone through had happened in the real world, there was no doubt at all that she would be dead right now. It still hurt a bit, but the pain was mostly just annoying, rather than debilitating.

She was absolutely and completely fine. She had felt almost nothing throughout that entire ordeal. It had been terrifying as it had played out, and her senses had been so warped by it that she hadn't been able to follow what happened with any clarity, but like a small child who cried endlessly before getting a shot and who ended up being confused afterward about how easy it turned out to be in the end, she came to the realization that her fear had been a massive overreaction.

Her current body was way more durable than she had ever imagined.

So that was her first thought. Amazement and astonishment at how strong she was in this new world.

The second thought that came to her mind quickly took over, though, leaving all others forgotten.

Rage.

It wasn't really a specific thought, actually. It was more like the sun had just risen inside her head and was looking for any possible excuse to incinerate everything. It was an all-encompassing, blindingly bright rage that completely consumed her mind.

Now that she wasn't afraid anymore, her fury had now taken a front-row seat.

Because she had just been absolutely manhandled. It didn't matter that it hadn't hurt that much. She had been manhandled! Her! She had had her hair tugged, had been beaten and thrown around, bitchslapped multiple times, punched, kicked, and had been thrown down a staircase, all by the most infuriating player she had ever met, like a used up piece of garbage.

Told to shut up and that everything she had to say was worthless.

It made her furious! And it was made all the worse by the fact that she knew, with near certainty, that he was laughing at her at that very moment.

Good lord did she hate that laugh of his. It nearly sent her over the edge every time she heard it.

Never before had she been this mad. She literally saw red.

So she wasted no time in picking up her rapier and racing back up the staircase, hellbent on getting revenge.


With one player dealt with, and only a passing thought about how he regretted not having had the opportunity to film that girl tumbling down those stairs, as his camera was still recording inside the boss room, Kirito immediately focused on his next target.

The blue-haired player.


Diabel had been unable to do anything to help his temporary partner as he had needed to single-handedly fend off all the minions, and the boss himself, all at once. Even if he had wanted to, he wouldn't have been able to do it since every spare moment of his time was spent trying to keep himself alive.

At least, that was what he told himself.

It was a lie though, and he knew it. He could have helped her if he had followed them outside the room. But if he had done that, the doors would have been closed, and Illfang would have instantly regenerated his HP back up to 100%. As a beta tester, he knew how that all worked.

He chose not to do it.

It had easily been the hardest decision he had ever made in his life. Despite everything this hooded player had said about not wanting to kill either of them, he easily could have killed that girl while Diabel stood by and chose to do nothing.

He had been forced to choose between two impossible scenarios. Try to save the girl and let Illfang regenerate, or keep Illfang from regenerating back to full health and leave his partner to her fate.

Illfang was so close to death. Only a minute or two more and it would all be over. He even had a realistic shot of finishing it off himself now. All he'd need is a little breathing room from the minions. If Asuna came back, it would be their victory if they could just launch one last assault.

Ultimately, that was his decision. Diabel had recounted and tallied up all the countless opportunities in which the hooded player could have killed either one of them if he had really wanted to, but didn't, and took a leap of faith. This player, as suspicious as he was, truly didn't seem to want them to die. He wanted them to fail to kill Illfang but did not want to kill them directly to do it.

So Diabel was able to deduce the player's plan. He intended to drag them both outside the room and close the door to cause the boss to fully heal in an instant. If that happened, even if Asuna came back at that point, Illfang simply would have way too much health to take down with just the two of them alone. They would tire themselves out long before finishing it off.

So the best option, with all of this in mind, was to stay put, and trust in the fact that the hooded player wouldn't kill that girl no matter how much he wanted to make it look like he would, and in the meantime, get Illfang away from the boss door to prevent being dragged out of the room himself when the player inevitably came back inside.

The idea was to at least buy enough time for the girl to recover and to come back inside. To succeed at that, he was going to need to avoid being dragged out of the room himself for as long as possible.

Diabel immediately grimaced upon noticing the player walk back inside the room, without Asuna in tow.

"Are you going to leave peacefully or not?" The hooded player asked.

Diabel didn't say anything at first as he continued the battle. He wanted to stall for as much time as possible so he tried to steer the conversation in another direction.

"Is Asuna still alive?" He asked as he deflected a mace from one of the minions.

Diabel knew the answer already but wanted to waste as much of this guy's time as possible.

"I see that you wish to be dragged out," The unknown player replied, not falling for it. "Fair enough." Then he drew his sword and sprinted toward him.

Diabel turned and ran without hesitation. He tried to make a beeline toward Illfang's throne, trying to get as far away from the door as possible. Unfortunately, however, after only a half a dozen steps or so, he suddenly slipped on something.

Stunned, he looked down as he collapsed to the floor and noticed a shield. Illfang's shield.

He turned back towards the hooded player and saw his outstretched hand.

Diabel's jaw dropped in amazement at the sight. Putting aside everything that had happened, the sheer accuracy that had been required to throw a shield of that size right under his feet as he was running, stunned him.

He looked up just in time to see Illfang's fist. Diabel was punched, and by total coincidence, flew right back towards the hooded player.

Taking the unexpected opportunity, and displaying remarkable timing, Kirito leaped into the air, and kicked the flying Diabel, redirecting his momentum just enough to send him over towards the door.

Diabel landed, and in desperation, tried to frantically cling onto anything within his reach in order to stop the other player from successfully extricating him from the room.

But he, like Asuna, was given no chance to collect himself.

A brief, chaotic struggle ensued as the hooded player ripped the minions apart without even slowing down as he sprinted towards him.

The player was on him in an instant. Diabel tried to get his sword up to defend himself, but the player knocked it out of his hand and kicked him back to the ground. From that point forward, it was all downhill.

He was winded, kicked, and forcibly dragged outside the room in a remarkable display of skill on the other player's part. This hooded player fended off all the minions, the boss, and Diabel himself, all at once, and was still able to drag him towards the door.

He knew at that moment that this hooded player, whoever he was, was without a doubt one of the strongest players in the game.

Diabel was tossed outside in a heap.

He turned and saw out of the corner of his eye the blue light of a sword skill activating.

He caught a single glimpse of the cloaked player spinning unbelievably quickly through the air towards him. The player landed, planted his foot, and struck him in the side with a roundhouse kick.

It had been a blur. Never before had he been hit as hard as that. He didn't even know it was possible to kick anything that hard in this game. Diabel left the ground and flew straight across the entire length of the new room he found himself in. He didn't hit the ground again until he had travelled well over thirty meters.

He landed on his back, and then bounced, travelling even further out.

While he was tumbling, he caught a few glimpses of the open boss room door as it receded, and saw the cloaked player immediately try to rush back inside. All the while he flew further and further away.

It seemed to happen in slow motion.

All the player would have to do is close that door, and everything would be over just like that. Having all the players leave the room was not enough. The doors had to be closed in addition to this. But there was nothing more that he could do to stop the player from closing them.

The door got smaller and smaller as he frantically tried to stop himself.

But it was no use. He was moving too fast.

It was over.

The revelation felt like it had crushed his soul. They had been so close.

It was all over.

Diabel closed his eyes in disappointment as he gave up.


A few minutes earlier

Agil started to worry about that girl after she had not returned. He had figured that she'd come back as soon as she realized that the boss was back to full strength.

However, she hadn't. And that made him start to wonder if she really had done something stupid like run inside and try to solo the boss. So after making sure the rest of the failed raid party were all back up to full strength, he set out after her.

He didn't want to waste any time, so he ran at a moderate clip.

He spent the next several minutes retracing his steps all the way back to the stairs leading up to the boss room.

He made it back to the room with the staircase in it just in time to see the very girl he was looking for pick herself up from the base of the steps for some reason, pick up her rapier and take off back up the stairs.

He would have called after her, but he hesitated, having forgotten what her name was. He had actually never even learned it, having only said a few passing comments to her over the day or so since they had met. So instead, he simply raced after her.

He found himself about halfway up the stairs, a moment away from telling her to wait up, when something extraordinary that he had not expected to happen, happened.

Just as the rapier user climbed over the last step, Agil watched as Diabel himself, the thought-to-be-dead leader of the raid group, flew through the air and rammed into the girl at an extremely high speed, blowing her over like a bowling pin.

The hit was extraordinary. It reminded Agil of what it would look like to watch a fully grown, top-tier NFL athlete, in full gear, using his full strength with nothing held back to smash into and utterly destroy a kindergartener with a tackle.

The girl went from a running position to having the back of her neck striking the concrete floor in about a quarter of a second in the mother of all clotheslines. She smashed off the top step of the staircase and bounced, rocketing backwards and flipping uncontrollably like a rag doll.

She had absorbed all of Diabel's momentum unexpectedly, and sailed backwards and back down the stairs, making it almost a quarter way down the entire flight before actually making contact with the steps themselves. She landed on her back and had no hope whatsoever of stopping herself as she once again rapidly tumbled down the staircase, far faster and more violently than the previous time.

Agil tried to catch her. He really did. But it had nearly been impossible to succeed. Catching someone as they rapidly somersaulted, head over heels, down a flight of stairs proved too difficult a task for him. To his credit, he nearly managed to catch her leg, but his attempt to grab her as she went flying passed him failed and her calf bounced off the back of his hand.

The girl continued, unimpeded, down every single remaining step throughout the rest of the staircase.

There were hundreds of them.


Diabel thanked all the gods that he could think of that something had managed to break his fall at the last moment. He had very nearly fallen down a staircase. Could you imagine that? Him! Falling down the stairs! It would have been super embarrassing! Only a loser would do that! But moreover, it would have guaranteed that this unknown player would succeed in his plans, whatever they were.

He was back in the game! There was still hope!

He had no idea what had broken his fall, as when he turned around, there was nothing there, but he didn't care either. Whatever had stopped him, had given him the chance to turn everything around. So he did not waste the opportunity. He got up and raced back over towards the door.

The hooded player in front of him was in the process of closing it. Diabel could see the golden light emanating from inside the boss room slowly start to recede as the doors closed. The gap between the two sides of the door narrowed more and more.

With every step, Diabel wondered whether or not he would make it there in time. He was moving as quickly as he could, but it looked like he wasn't going to. It was going to be really close.

Thankfully, the boss door seemed like it was really heavy. It was not easy to manipulate either open or closed, so the hooded player was having a moderately difficult time with it on his own.

Ultimately, the thing that ended up deciding the victor in this race was one single detail. The boss door opened inwards. When standing outside the boss room, a player had to push on the door to get it to open, not pull. If it had been the other way around, Diabel would not have made it in time. But as it was, Diabel could throw his weight at the door as it was closing to keep it from shutting all the way, something that would not have been possible otherwise.

The cloaked player was only a hair away from closing it when Diabel struck.

Since all of his attempts to use a sword against this player had failed miserably so far, Diabel decided to simply throw himself at him, tackling him and sending both of them sprawling back into the boss room and forcing the door back open.

He landed on top of the player and grabbed him by the fabric of his cloak.

"Not happening!" He shouted in his face, victorious. "I won't let you―"

Diabel was headbutted by the player, causing him to fail to say what he had wanted to.

Diabel tried to punch the player under him, but Kirito leaned his head to the side, causing him to punch the ground with his fist instead, an action that would have destroyed his hand had this not been a virtual world.

Kirito twisted around so he was on his knees, and stood up, causing Diabel to tumble off of him onto the ground.

Then both players summoned their respective weapons to their hands and began a short but intense duel.

Since everyone had left the room for a few moments, all the minions and Illfang himself had made their way over to the far side of the room in the meantime. The room was still active, however, and Illfang's HP remained a hair away from 0. They were just far away now, giving Diabel a chance to finally have some breathing room to do battle with this hooded player without any interruptions from the minions.

Since they were battling inside the doorway itself, they were on the cusp of the room and so the minions did not begin to approach them. And neither did Illfang. The two players were outside of all the monsters' attack ranges, allowing both of them to focus entirely on the duel between them.

Diabel brought every single ounce of experience and skill forward in this fight. His morale was at its height, and everything depended on him. He was the last one standing between this hooded player, and whatever dastardly machinations he had planned, coming to fruition.

He could not afford to lose! Everything was depending on him, now! He was the last hope!


Agil ended up torn after watching the girl fall down all of those stairs like that. He had to decide whether to go check up on her now or go and see Diabel, the player he had previously believed to have been killed. He ultimately chose the latter after noticing that the girl's HP gauge was still above 50%, so she was alright. And besides, Agil expected her to run up to the top of the stairs again anyway, so he'd meet up with her then.

So he continued towards the top and widened his eyes in surprise as he saw Diabel battling it out with a cloaked player that he had never seen before. The battle was vicious, too, and his immediate thought was that this unknown player was trying to PK the raid leader.

Agil immediately rushed over towards the battle in order to help out.


Kirito got the upper hand after letting go of his sword in the middle of the fight and punching Diabel in the face with the newly freed hand.

It was such a bizarre maneuver. But for some reason, it kept on catching everyone he used it on by surprise, so it became one of Kirito's go-to's.

Kirito then re-caught his dropped sword in his opposite hand before it hit the ground, and slashed the other player across the chest with it. This created the opportunity that he needed to kick Diabel clear out of the room once again, and finally, end this farce of a situation for good.

"No!" Diabel shouted as Kirito immediately started closing the doors once again.

Diabel, in desperation, threw his Anneal Blade at the player. This forced Kirito to stop for a brief moment to deflect the attack.

It only held him up for a single second.

But that one second was enough. Because just as Kirito was about to finally slam the door shut for good, Agil arrived.

Kirito was forced to block the incoming axe. But the swing was too strong, and it blew him back into the room. Agil immediately rushed in after him.


Diabel was in tears. The single most beautiful sight that he had ever seen in his life had presented itself to him.

"Agil, you absolute fucking hero!" The man had literally just saved the day single-handedly!

"What's going on here?!" Agil shouted.

"Illfang is on his last legs!" Diabel replied. "If the three of us work together, we can still win! But this guy showed up and stopped us! He even started healing the boss!"

"What?! Why?!"

"I don't know! It doesn't matter though! Help us hold him off, and we'll interrogate him later!"


Kirito was livid.

He had been a hair too slow. A fucking hair! Then like a bunch of anime heroes in the most cliched way imaginable, they had managed to come back from the brink and foil his plans!

He was pissed! And to top it all off, Agil was here now. Which made it impossible for him to speak anymore. If he said anything, his voice might be recognized from all the times he had spoken to Agil in the past in his shop during those meetings with Timely.

Thankfully, however, Kirito's cloaks that he used when in combat were different in appearance than the ones he had used when he had spoken with Agil earlier. He was also not the only player in the game who made use of the Mask ability. So the fact that his face was blackened out was not an uncommon sight in the game. Agil would not see this ability and identify him as the merchant that always hid his face since so many other cloaked players did the same thing.

If it had been an identifiable ability, Kirito never would have used it.

Kirito's appearance was different enough in that moment that the thought that he and that merchant that Agil routinely made deals were secretly the same, wouldn't even cross the man's mind. If Kirito decided to speak, however, that would undoubtedly change. So his identity was still safe.

He had been so close to ending this only for the chance to slip away. If he had just been a little faster, he would have succeeded in kicking everyone else out of the room. Now the potential existed for him to have to fight three players at once now, instead of just two.

He couldn't shake the feeling that he might have just lost his last chance to succeed.

He didn't plan on giving up, however. Not yet. But he was really starting to consider pulling out his second sword and showing these people the true difference between their skill levels.

But he still wanted to keep that capability a secret. It was another tough choice. If he drew his other sword and started fighting with it now, he'd almost certainly win. It'd be tough, but he could do it. But then everyone would be able to identify him by that in the future. In the future, whenever he decided to dual wield, other players would say: 'Hey! That hooded guy with the two swords is the same hooded guy from that crazy shitshow that happened in the boss room on floor 1! Let's get him!' Or some nonsense along those lines.

Maybe that wasn't so bad, though. Kirito didn't know what the best move was at that moment. But in general, he did not like giving away his abilities if he didn't have to, and did not like drawing attention to himself. He could still win with only one sword. In fact, using two would make things much more dangerous since most of the techniques he had developed with them were far more lethal which made it much harder to pull his punches.

So he tentatively decided to stick with just one for now, and he decided to see how the situation developed before going all out like that. To these people, he was still just some random, hooded player, who was at the higher end of the spectrum of skill. He could be a lot of different people. So these players had no way to narrow down exactly who he was yet. His identity was still safe, as a result.

He could be anyone, so he did not want to give them more information than necessary to help these players in the investigation that would no doubt unfold after this conflict was over.

In the meantime, he frantically started trying to come up with a workable plan.

Kirito turned around and noticed that the minions were making their way over now that they were a decent distance inside the room once again.

Illfang remained at the back wall, however, still glitched out.


As the first wave of minions arrived they split up into three groups to go after the three different players. Agil, Diabel, and Kirito put up a unified front.

All but one of the kobolds were dead in seconds, as a result. Agil's axe had sent the last one flying some distance away. It was still alive, but it was hardly a threat on its own to anyone there.

"And who are you supposed to be?" Agil asked the hooded player, after lowering his axe.

Kirito said nothing.

"Not going to talk? Come on man, it's two on one."

"Three."

Diabel and Agil looked back just in time to see Asuna slowly stalk back into the room.

Her hair was shadowing her eyes, and she looked like a wild animal. Drool was leaking out of her mouth, and everybody could feel the sheer aura of rage that was oozing off of her.

She was dragging her rapier across the ground as one would expect a caveman to drag a giant club. The tip was sparking as it bounced across the stone floor.

"Holy shit! What happened to you?!" Diabel shouted in panic, seeing the disturbing sight. He had expected her to be a little roughed up from her earlier beating, but this was something else. She was a complete trainwreck! Her hair was blown wildly all over the place and sticking straight up, looking like she had just been inside a wind-tunnel! Or a hurricane!

Diabel had no explanation for any of it. The other player must have done a number on her!

Asuna didn't respond at first, more than a little pissed off at the player that had just spoken. She kept her gaze fixed on the ground in front of her. Her whole body was trembling as she tried to take deep breaths. She was so unbelievably furious at that moment that she found it difficult to breathe properly.

The last remaining nearby minion thought that that was an opportunity. It tried to get a cheap shot in on the girl while she wasn't looking.

But Asuna had had just about enough of that happening to her. So she intercepted the strike with her free hand. She caught it by the handle without taking her eyes off the floor of the room. Then she twisted and snapped the creature's wrist, causing the weapon to clatter across the room and the kobold to grunt in pain.

"What happened to me?" She repeated in a dark, vicious tone. "I wonder? What happened to me?"

She snaked her arm around the minion's neck and pulled it down into a lock, trapping the creature's head at her hip, under her arm.

It was all happening automatically and she wasn't even looking at what she was doing.

Then she reached up with her other hand, grabbing the creature by the back of the neck and twisting.

She snapped its neck with her bare hands and then ripped its head off.

What was left of the creature shattered into polygons a moment later.

Asuna glared at Diabel.

"Hm?! I wonder?!" She shouted sarcastically and hysterically, so far beyond rage that Diabel had even asked her that question.

"Dude," Agil whispered to the terrified man next to him. "You knocked her down the stairs."

"What?! No, I didn't!" He instantly denied.

"You definitely did. I saw it."

"Wait so the thing that stopped my fall was―"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

Diabel looked back into the furious, gleaming eyes of the girl bearing down on him.

"Okay, okay, okay! H-hold on a second! T-to be fair, I didn't do it on purpose!" He frantically tried to explain. "It was this guy!" He immediately pointed at the masked Kirito. "He was the one that launched me into you!"

"Is that so?" Asuna asked, a single crazed eye peeking through her bangs, and glaring at Kirito.

"You did that too? You beat me, and threw me down those stairs twice?"

"You fell down those stairs twice?" Agil asked, astonished at the absurdity of the claim. It suddenly made sense to him why the girl had been at the bottom of the stairs when he had seen her back then. He must have just missed it when it had happened the first time.

"Yes," she confirmed in a deceptively calm voice.

There were a few moments of intense silence.

Then Kirito chuckled.

He couldn't help it. As pissed off as he was, that story was just hilarious. She had fallen down the stairs two times, back-to-back, in rapid succession? Kirito was kicking himself now for not having had his camera on him at the time, and for not staying outside the room to see it.

He could only imagine how funny that must have been.


In the future when Asuna looked back on that moment, she would never be able to completely remember what happened next, or how.

At first, after hearing the hooded player start to laugh at her misfortune yet again, she joined in. The other two players tentatively joined them as well, and everyone seemed to be united for a few moments by the entertainment supplied by Asuna's repeated tumbles down the staircase.

They all shared a good chuckle.

Obviously, however, Asuna didn't find it funny in the least. She was the only one that didn't. But something fundamental had just shattered inside her at that moment and it wouldn't be repaired again for some time. Her laughter had simply slipped out as some sort of strange coping mechanism for whatever process had broken down inside her head.

What started as a laugh turned into a strange mix between a wail and a scream.

Agil and Diabel stopped laughing after that, more than a little disturbed at the blood-curdling sound.

But the hooded player did not.

He kept on laughing.

Upon seeing this, Asuna's mind fogged up completely.

The next thing she knew there was a minion in her hands and she was swinging it around over her head and screaming. She launched it with every last fibre of strength contained within her body at the player that bore full responsibility for all of her recent problems.

The hooded player.

Then her rapier was in her hands and she was trying to kill the guy.

On three separate occasions over the previous hour, she had thought that she had reached the ceiling for how mad it was possible for her to get.

She had been wrong every time.

This time it was real, though. She was sure. She could feel it, and she knew. This hooded player had pushed her, single-handedly, all the way up to the summit.

She had reached peak rage.


AN: Have a Nice Day!

Improvements:

Slimicee, Kallum C: Grammar, and improvements to the flow of the entire chapter.