I'm an idiot.
Kirito and his party came out of the forest and entered a clearing, quickly shielding their eyes at the sudden brightness that came from leaving the treeline. In the middle of the clearing stood an enormous brown bull, standing 13 feet tall and sporting an odd bulb-shaped growth between its horns like a protruding forehead. A nametag over its head read ((The Bullbous Bow)), and two health bars were set on the right side of its nameplate.
However, despite being the first group to arrive, Kirito's mind was not on the field boss in front of them. His mind was elsewhere, reflecting on the conversation he had last night when he returned to the room Leonn and he were sharing.
"She made you one too, you know." Leonn said immediately as Kirito entered their shared room. He was sitting on his bed, staring at Kirito with a disappointed look in his eyes.
"What? Who made me what?" Kirito asked, a confused expression crossing his face.
Leonn swiped open his menu and materialized a sandwich on a simple plate. "This. Asuna was excited to try her cooking skill and wanted to cook us all dinner."
Realization hit Kirito like a truck. "She did?" He looked down at the sandwich as he sat down on the other bed, facing Leonn.
"Yep. I'm not going to scold you or anything." Leonn chuckled dryly as he handed the sandwich over to Kirito. "I can already tell you feel like crap as it is."
Kirito was starving, but he decided to slowly take a bite. He didn't want to seem ungrateful. It was delicious, and that made his guilt all the worse. Asuna was a friend, and he didn't want to make her feel unwelcome or unappreciated.
"Might wanna make it up to her tomorrow." Leonn added before climbing into his bed.
Kirito stared down at the floorboards, slowly eating the sandwich so carefully made for him by someone he'd wronged. He'd have to apologize, first things first, but he'd have to figure out a way to pay her back. He had no crafting of his own to speak of, so there wasn't much he could offer her.
"How…?" Kirito mumbled, barely audible even in the silence of their shared room.
"What's the Beater doing here?!" An all-too-familiar voice called out.
Kibaou.
Kirito whipped back to reality to see that three other parties had assembled nearby. Kibaou was the first he saw for obvious reasons, and he had a group of five others with him, all dressed in green. The other group was headed by a man Kirito remembered calling himself Lind, and his squad was similarly dressed in blue. The last group were the Legend Braves, sans Nezha, who like Kirito's group hadn't felt the need to color coordinate.
Kirito sighed. "We're here for the field boss, same as you."
"Well you'd better not get in our way!" Kibaou spat. He looked over towards Lind's group. "That means you too!"
Lind sighed. "Don't lump us in with the Beaters, please. And we should be the ones saying that to you. If anyone's going to get the last hit bonus, it's us."
Shots fired.
Kirito winced at that last comment and knew the kind of firestorm that would follow. Kibaou took it just as expected and marched up to Lind's group, red in the face and shouting a number of insults and expletives. In a matter of seconds, both groups were in a shouting match as either side tried to justify why their group deserved the last attack bonus more than the other.
Meanwhile, the Legend Braves walked up to Kirito's group, looking rather cheerful, which was in stark contrast to the tense atmosphere radiating off Kibaou's Aincrad Liberation Squad and Lind's Dragon Knights Brigade.
The man Argo identified as Orlando stepped forward. "Hey there. We saw you four on the 1st boss broadcast the other day and we wanted to meet you ourselves. I'm Orlando and these are the Legend Braves." Orlando then began to point out each individual member, who stepped forward and bowed.
Beowulf was one of their two tanks. He wore a horned helmet, sported a thin line of facial hair between his lips and his chin, and was by far the stockiest of the five present. Strapped to his side was a one-handed axe, and to his back was a shield.
Cuchulainn was their second tank, wearing an open-visored European-style helm. He was clean shaven and his face was rather gaunt. Taller than Beowulf, Cuchulainn looked, for all intents and purposes, like a rookie knight. His weaponry was similar to Beowulf's but used a sword instead of an axe.
Enkidu was their support. Of a similar build to Beowulf, he looked like the kind of player that filled in wherever he was needed. Several health potions and antidotes were strapped to his belt, and he had a mace equipped. He also had a shield on his back, but Kirito soon learned that most of the time he preferred to keep a hand free in case he needed to administer a healing potion quickly.
Gilgamesh was their heavy damage dealer. By far the largest of the bunch, both in height and weight, he had a greatsword strapped to his back and wore moderate plate armor. No helmet though, Kirito noticed. Definitely a risk, but with two tanks in his party it was apparently an acceptable one.
Orlando, the leader, was an interesting looking fellow. Kirito had his back to him last night, but he could easily see why Argo kept referring to him as "brow-man." To call his eyebrows aggressive was being kind. He, like his party members, was dressed in moderate plate armor, but he had a spear strapped to his back. Kirito thought this was a good choice for a dedicated party leader; the spear would allow him to attack at a relative distance, which would put him in a good position to delegate roles, call out attack patterns, and lead.
"It's nice to meet you all." Kirito said. "This is my party. That's Sinon, that's Leonn, and that's Asuna." Kirito couldn't help but frown ever so slightly when he met Asuna's gaze. He quickly turned away to face the Legend Braves.
"So you played in the beta. What's the deal with the field boss here?" Orlando asked.
Kirito paused before answering. "You don't have a problem with me being a Beater?"
"Nah." Orlando responded. "If it gets us out of here faster, we don't have a problem with it."
"Oh." Kirito replied, shocked that he wasn't given the same treatment Lind and Kibaou had given him. "Well, it's pretty easy actually. It rushes forward and tries to ram its target. Then it turns around and keeps repeating that until it dies."
"Seems easy enough." Beowulf said.
"Yeah, this is a pretty tank-heavy fight. Tanks need to intercept the ram attack and keep it in place. The problem is it hits like a truck." Leonn explained. "It's going to take more than two tanks to keep it locked down long enough for the rest of the raid to do any significant damage."
Asuna stepped forward, into the middle of the conversation and pointed a finger towards the field.
"So not like that, then?"
Everyone spun around to see that the ALS and DKB had already engaged the oversized bull, which was rampaging wildly around the field, knocking players around left and right. Kibaou and Lind were trying to coordinate between their groups, but there was just as much infighting as there was focus on the boss. Every time the tanks from one team would line up to intercept a charge, the other team would try to butt in and the resulting instability meant that the defensive line wasn't prepared for the charge. Each team's damage dealers were getting impatient and starting running in to chase the bull, which was a futile effort given its speed and its ability to knock players away.
"Oh, for the love of…" Sinon began, pulling out her throwing picks. Everyone else drew their weapons and looked to their leaders.
Kirito turned to Orlando. "We're going to need to work together if we're going to salvage this. Are you with us?"
Orlando smiled. "What's your plan?"
Kirito looked back at the battlefield. "Beowulf and Cuchulainn set up a defensive line. Shields up, and you're not going to get much opportunity to strike back, so focus all your effort in holding the boss back. Leonn, you help brace them from behind." He looked towards his group. "Sinon, you draw its attention and lead it into the tanks. The rest of us wait just behind and on either side of the tank wall and wait for the impact. When our tanks have it stopped, we rush in to DPS its flanks as much as we can. Enkidu, be ready with potions in case our tanks need it."
All eight players collectively nodded and ran in to set up. Beowulf and Cuchulainn stood shoulder-to-shoulder and raised their shields, bracing themselves against impact. Leonn stowed his maul on his back and stood behind them, a hand on each tank's back, and took a bracing stance himself. The rest of the group took their positions on either side as Sinon ran in.
Sinon darted in, several throwing picks laced between her fingers and ready to launch. The battlefield ahead of her was in complete disarray. Several players lay on the ground, either stunned from taking a charge head-on solo or attempting to catch their breath and heal. Chasing the bull around were a handful of DPS from different teams, who were actively shoving each other to the side while following the boss around.
Just as the bull was rearing back to charge again, Sinon threw a handful of picks at its head, striking it directly on its protruding forehead. The boss quickly turned and huffed before charging straight at her. There were several cries of confusion and anger coming from the ALS and DKB as the boss rerouted towards Sinon.
"What the - ?"
"Hey!"
"Damned kill-stealers!"
Sinon grimaced before shouting back. "We're buying you time, idiots! Get your crap together or get out of the way!"
Sinon turned her attention back to her group and the Legend Braves, who were ready to receive. Easily outpacing the bull, she reached the group first and quickly leapt over the tank wall and rolled to a stop. She turned just in time to see the impact.
*WHAM!*
All three tanks grunted as the bull met their shield wall, their feet sliding back several inches before all three collectively found their footing and held firm. The bull itself strained against this unexpected wall of resistance, kicking up virtual earth and rock with its hooves as it tried to push forward.
"Now!" Kirito shouted.
Kirito and Asuna slammed into its right flank, carving into it with a series of jabs, thrusts, and slashes. Orlando, Enkidu, and Gilgamesh charged in from their side as well, causing a sizable amount of damage on their side. Sinon, given her position, vaulted off of Leonn's back and landed on the bull's before bringing out her newly purchased dagger and slamming it into the bull's neck repeatedly.
The boss's health bar slowly began to drain at this coordinated onslaught. Once its first health bar had lost a third of its health, it reared back and ran the opposite way, charging straight towards the rest of the raid group. Sinon hurriedly jumped off the bull to rejoin her group.
Not to be outdone by some Beater and a bunch of newbies, Kibaou and Lind seemed to have put aside their differences and set up their own defensive line similar to Kirito and Orlando's. It seemed to hold, although one of the tanks fell over at first from the sheer impact of the bull's charge. Once the bull's charge had been halted, their DPS ran in and started pouring on the damage. Its health pool drained faster, bringing it down another third before it broke away to charge again at Kirito and Orlando's wall.
This continued for the better part of ten minutes, with both halves of the raid bouncing the field boss back and forth between them. A sort of rhythm fell into place and were it not for the 2-ton raging bull threatening to end their existence, both groups might have fallen into complacency from the monotony of the exercise.
It should have been an easy fight, but ego once again reared its ugly head when the boss reached the last third of its health remaining.
Both the ALS and DKB members, seeing victory just within reach, let their competitive spirits take over. Tanks began shoving each other out of the way, DPS began to obstruct one another's strikes, all in an attempt to secure the last attack. With its main obstacle weakened due to infighting, ((The Bullbous Bow)) broke through the tank wall and began throwing players left and right and trampling those unfortunate enough to be caught in its rampage.
"Sinon!" Kirito shouted.
"On it!" She answered, jumping over her tank wall again to grab the bull's attention. Several throwing picks later, she raced back to her team with a very angry, very injured bull in tow. Leaping over the tanks once again and rolling to a stop, she looked back to see her party surrounding the now-immobilized boss. She smiled as she saw its health bar slowly dropping to nothingness.
Unwilling to sit idly by, Sinon once again launched off of Leonn's back, much to his chagrin, and landed on the bull's back. She drew her dagger out and started thrusting again with all her might. Shouts of confusion and outrage once again reached their ears, but no one between Kirito's group and the Legend Braves could be bothered to care.
Just as the ALS and DKB forces reached the boss, there was the sound of shattering glass as ((The Bullbous Bow)) exploded into polygons.
[Congratulations!]
"Hey!" Kibaou shouted. "Who got the last attack bonus?!"
All eyes looked around at each other for what seemed an eternity until not one, but two pop-ups appeared. Everyone looked over to see who got the bonus and immediately half of the raid looked visibly upset when it learned who got the bonus.
The first was Kirito, and the second was Sinon. Both had apparently landed the last strike at the same time, so the system had awarded them both the bonus.
"Damned Beaters!" Kibaou spat, eyes filled with rage and fury as he glared at Kirito and Sinon. "You just had to kill-steal from us, didn't you?!"
"Now hold on just a second!" Asuna stepped forward. "If you both had kept your teams together, the boss wouldn't have broken free and we wouldn't have had to finish it off!"
Kibaou was practically red in the face. If steam coming out of the ears were a feature in SAO, this man would certainly have some blowing out right now.
"I hate to admit it, but she's right." Lind said, drawing surprised looks among the DKB members and angry faces from the Aincrad Liberation Squad. "We had it and let it slip through our fingers. Rest assured, however, that we won't let that happen again next time."
Kibaou turned on his heel and began to walk towards the back end of the field towards the entrance of the Labyrinth, which could now be seen. "Whatever. We'll go find the boss room without you idiots!" With a wave of his hand, he beckoned his group to join him.
Lind and the Dragon Knight Brigade soon followed afterward, not saying another word to Kirito's group or to the Legend Braves. Before long, both the ALS and the DKB had vanished into the labyrinth, leaving the other half of the raid alone in the field.
"So what'd you two get?" Beowulf asked, eyeing Kirito and Sinon anxiously.
Sinon opened her menu first and materialized her drop, a bow. It looked like it was carved from a rich, red wood and the ends of the bow were gnarled and resembled small orbs. Just about everyone's mouths dropped open at the sight.
"A bow?!" Enkidu shouted. "This game has bows?!"
"Yeah, but they're not supposed to be available until much later, and they're super rare." Kirito answered. "At least that's how it was in the beta."
Asuna looked towards Kirito, who looked just as confused as she was, before turning back to Sinon. "Can you even use that?"
Sinon pulled open her menu. "Actually, yeah. A new skill opened up. ((Archery)). I'll have to swap out my ((Blade Throwing)) skill for it, but I can use this." She pressed a few buttons on her menu before properly equipping her bow.
"What's it called?" Orlando asked.
Sinon pulled open her inventory menu and clicked on the new bow she'd acquired. With another press of her menu, she set its visibility to [all], allowing everyone nearby to read it for themselves.
"Hold up." Leonn started, a smirk crossing his face. "You picked up a bow called ((Bullbous Bow)) from a field boss called ((The Bullbous Bow)). That's a little on the nose, don't you think?"
Everyone looked at Leonn with confused looks on their faces.
"In English, the word for bow, like the weapon, is the same word as the one for Bow, like the front of a ship and the name of this boss. It's a pun, a play on words." Leonn explained before shaking his head. "English is weird like that."
"What did you get, Kirito?" Asuna asked, making eye contact with her leader.
Kirito held her gaze for a couple of seconds before pulling up his own menu and materializing his bonus, a small hoop with bladed edges. Many looked at Kirito, looking for an answer as to the identity of this strange object.
Kirito smiled.
"It's called a chakram, and I think I know exactly what to do with this."
"You're so lucky!"
I'm sorry, what?
"Ok, not lucky, since he's stuck in there to begin with, but still! Everyone's talking about him and his party!"
Suguha sighed. It had been several days since the footage of Illfang's defeat had been released online. To call it a viral sensation would be grossly understating the effect this had on social media. Many popular vloggers were already providing in-depth analyses of the fight, breaking down the game mechanics and individual choices down to the second, dissecting each frame of the video for what it was worth. Sociologists were already analyzing and theorizing on the social dynamics and sub-cultures that might exist in the Death Game.
Analysis aside, the video had already been viewed billions of times by the casual passerby. Within a matter of days, the names of the players identified in the raid had become household names. Not their real names, of course, but their avatar names. Most people understood the need for privacy when it came to the touchy subject that was Sword Art Online, and while there were a few internet sleuths lurking about trying to unearth real life identities, it had become a sort of internet taboo to discuss the real identities of the raiders.
And she'd just confessed to her friend Shinichi that Kirito was her brother.
I shouldn't have told him.
"... me, I'm personally team Kirito. It's super obvious that he was putting on an act, or he wouldn't have tried to warn Diavel." Shinichi went on, completely oblivious to the fact that Suguha had zoned out for a moment. "Those jerks on team Kibaou are way too dense to see the big picture."
Suguha looked around, checking again to see if anyone was within earshot to witness this frankly embarrassing bout of fanaticism that Shinichi was effectively shouting to the heavens. Thankfully, given that the two were seated outside in a rather remote part of the school campus, no one was nearby. Only the cherry blossom trees, the brick walls, and the odd trash can or two would be privy to this conversation.
"Does that mean you know the rest of his party too? Sinon? Leonn? Asuna?" Shinichi turned to look at Suguha, eyes pleading and gleaming with enthusiasm.
She chuckled dryly. "No, I don't know them. Sorry."
"Well, that was a bit of a stretch I guess." Shinichi said. "You're basically a celebrity by proxy now, you know that?"
Suguha winced. "Yeah, about that. Can you keep this a secret please?" The last thing she needed was her brother's identity to be made known. He'd made plenty of fans in the past few days, but the unfortunate truth of the matter was that nearly as many people were upset at him. The kind of attention that would draw to her family would not be good, at all.
"Yeah, of course! I'm not stupid." Shinichi said, looking almost insulted. "There's a lot of people out there that don't like your brother, and I'm not about to bring their fury on you and your family."
Suguha sighed with relief. Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea, after all, telling Shinichi. Now she had somebody she could talk to about this that wasn't her mother and father.
"There's some talk on the net that the 2nd floor fight might be streamed online too. No one knows when that might be, though…" Shinichi trailed off.
"Do you think so?" Suguha asked. The idea of seeing her brother again was both exciting and terrifying. Seeing him again would be wonderful, but the dangers that came with a boss fight meant that death was a real possibility. That was terrifying.
"Yeah, I think so. I think Kayaba's the one putting that footage out there. I mean, who else has access to that?" Shinichi explained. "Which means he likes to show off. He's not going to stop with just the one boss fight. He's probably going to stream all one hundred floors."
That's even worse, Suguha realized. If Kazuto was going to keep fighting at the forefront, and everything she knew about her brother as a gamer pointed towards this fact, then she was going to have to watch him fight for his life one hundred times. Or worse, less than that if he died during one fight.
Shinichi seemed to notice his friend's blanched face in between his speculative rants. "You ok? You're looking a little pale."
Suguha snapped back to reality and shook her head. "Just a little worried, that's all. That's my brother in there, fighting for his life."
That seemed to sober up the conversation some.
"I guess I never thought about it like that." Shinichi relented before looking down at his watch. "We should get going. Class is about to start."
Suguha and Shinichi both stood up and started walking towards their classroom.
"If you need someone to talk to about it, you let me know." Shinichi offered before giving a friendly grin. "I'm more than happy to talk about it, but you know that."
Suguha smiled.
"Thanks. Maybe I will."
"She's a natural." Asuna said.
"Yeah, she seems more comfortable with the bow than those throwing picks." Kirito said, sitting himself down next to Asuna.
Both Kirito and Asuna sat underneath a nearby tree while they watched their friend practice her new bow on some mobs nearby, large wasp-like monsters called ((Windwasps)). They'd situated themselves just outside of Urbus where the easiest mobs were so Sinon could train her new skill without much danger. Leonn was acting as a tank for the archer, intercepting monsters with a ((Blockade)) to grab aggro before they reached her. Otherwise, he seemed to be focused on parrying and blocking to allow Sinon every opportunity to get a shot in.
It hadn't taken long for word to spread about Aincrad's first archer. They had to visit town to purchase arrows, after all, and almost immediately players started spotting the bow on Sinon's back. There were a flurry of questions, mainly from newer players who were still stuck with throwing picks, but none that Sinon could immediately answer. News spread quickly, and it didn't take long for the Rat herself to track down the archer to start pestering her with questions. Once they'd purchased arrows from an NPC, who strangely now carried arrows for some reason, Kirito's party plus Argo had made their way to the outskirts for some training. Now, Kirito and Asuna watched from a distance while Leonn tanked, Sinon shot, and Argo observed.
"She seems to be doing more damage now." Asuna remarked, trying to make casual conversation.
"Windwasps are squishy, but yeah, I think you're right." Kirito agreed.
Uncomfortable silence followed, neither the fencer nor the swordsman sure of how to proceed.
Kirito broke the silence. "Sorry. I wasn't thinking."
Asuna loosened up somewhat at the sudden apology. "No, you weren't."
Kirito hung his head in shame. That clearly was not the reaction he was expecting, but arguably the one he deserved.
"It was delicious though." Kirito murmured.
It was a good thing his attention was focused on the grass underfoot, because Asuna's face spread into a wide grin before she managed to compose herself.
"I didn't know anything about weapons breaking during an enhance like that." Kirito began to explain. "It seems minor, but every little detail in this world can mean the difference between life and death. I need to make sure everyone is in the best condition to survive, so I wanted to learn as much as I could, as quickly as I could."
Asuna listened intently, waiting until Kirito was finished. "So, did you learn anything at least?"
Kirito spent the next several minutes sharing what he and Argo had learned of Nezha and the Legend Braves, as well as what Kirito planned to do now with that information. Asuna's expression started calm but slowly began to morph more and more into one that suggested she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"That's your plan?" Asuna asked, her voice tinged with confusion and incredulity. "After everything that happened?"
"Yeah." Kirito shifted his hands backward to lean back and watch his friends train in the distance. Sinon seemed to have gotten the hang of regular unassisted shots and was now feeling out how to use her weapon-specific skills.
"Well, I'm going with you if you're doing this." Asuna insisted, which drew a look of amusement mixed with confusion from Kirito. "Afterwards, we can go get some food. You owe me dinner, after all."
"Wait, what? How does that …" Kirito began before he saw Asuna giving him a rather smug look. "Ok then. I deserve that."
The two of them stood up and brushed themselves off before looking over to their friends.
"We're going into town! Message us if you need anything!" Kirito shouted, giving the rest of his party and Argo a wave. Leonn shoulder-bashed a wasp before giving a thumbs up, just as an arrow zoomed by and killed the stunned insect.
Kirito and Asuna turned and walked into town, talking between themselves of the plan Kirito concocted up and how Asuna could be involved. They'd finished hashing out the details just as they came into the market area of Urbus. It didn't take them long to find Nezha, who was even now in the process of breaking another client's weapon. Kirito looked over at Asuna, who gave him a nod. He looked back towards the blacksmith.
"Here goes."