Gooooooooooooood Morning Vietnam! Time for yours truly to come out of his monthly hibernation :D
This entire chapter is a fight scene so let's just skip straight to it and continue from where we left off, enjoy!
P.S Thanks for helping my story reach 10,000 views! Whether you only read the foreword or are still reading, you have my thanks!
"Leave it to me, I'll make sure to follow this through without fail," Kirito reassured him as they approached Asterius with their battle-cries.
Once they got close enough, Asterius noticed their presence and opened his gleaming red eyes as well as grabbed his massive hammer off his back and sported a fighting stance of his own. As Kirito lunged for the first strike, the battle began. To start with, he went for a simple stab to Asterius' upper right thigh with the Elucidator but the enemy stepped back quickly and avoided. However, now that Kirito had his Dual Blades ability back, he wouldn't just settle for one attack.
Before the lunging from his first attack diminished, he borrowed the momentum it carried to swing the Dark Repulsor above his head in a downward circular slash while also adding to his thrust by swinging his body around to the left and stepping forward. He could've used the sword skill Vertical Slash here but he didn't want to waste it since the probability of him hitting was low.
As he brought the Dark Repulsor down, Asterius' let out a loud roar which caused Kirito to slightly stumble, being as close as he was.
The roar was, however, interrupted by Jin who sliced at the back of one of Asterius' knees, causing him to buckle momentarily. Kirito saw this and wasted no time preparing a sword skill. As Asterius' went to regain its balance, Kirito ran and jumped towards the enemy's head before both his swords started to shine a dazzling yellow. "HORIZONTAL TWIN SLASH!" He shouted as he swung both of his blades from left to right. The first of his blades to hit was the Elucidator, which dug deep into the Taurus Kings lower neck, followed immediately by the Dark Repulsor which followed suit.
The speed of his slash allowed the blades to penetrate the enemy's skin easily and come out the other side as small bits of digital red data, which supposedly represented in-game blood, burst out of the wound along with them.
Asterius' first health bar dropped to about 30%, but since this was a floor boss, even a large attack like that barely made it flinch. The boss grabbed Kirito with its large hand and roared in his face before throwing him towards the wall. He could've avoided damage entirely, but as a result of the delay in motion due to using a sword skill, he was forced to hit the wall shoulder first with a hefty thud.
Luckily, his high level and stats minimalized the damage he received and he was able to regain his footing before hitting the ground but damage was still damage and he had lost 10% of his precious gauge. If this was just a normal mid-field boss that spawned randomly around the second floor, his health bar would've slowly regenerated. But for whatever reason, auto-regeneration was disabled in the labyrinths and boss rooms. At this point, Asterius had lost interest in Kirito and turned it's focus to the Moonlight Cats plus Toran. Asterius readied its hammer above its head and jumped in the air to slam it down on the group.
"Watch out!" Kaba yelled as they all dodged to safety. All except for Toran that is. Instead, he stood his ground and held his shield up to guard the hammer attack. Some of the others yelled at him to dodge but he remained where he was and stood his ground.
"Bring it on!" Toran shouted as he raised his shield up above his head to block the attack.
Right after Toran had shouted, the hammer hit the shield with a thunderous bang and a shockwave almost sent everyone flying backward. The hammer and the shield clashed for a few moments until the seeming goliath like hammer shattered the shield. Toran came dangerously close to being hit directly with the hammer, but thanks to the brief but strong efforts of his shield, the hammer fell atoms short of his body. Though it did crush some of his toes, he managed to hold in the pain and his health bar didn't go down much. Once Asterius re-lifted his hammer, Toran retreated to the back of the pack.
"You alright, Toran!?" Kirito asked worriedly but not taking his eyes off Asterius.
"Yeah, I'm all good," He answered through his slightly winded breathing.
"Toran isn't going to be as helpful without his shield, so everyone needs to be a little more cautious," Kaba announced to the group. He briefly looked back at Toran to make sure he didn't take any offense to his words but luckily, Toran nodded in agreement with everyone else. Then suddenly, before anyone could do anything more, the boss' eyes started to glow noticeably more than they were before and it leaned backward, seemingly sucking in a large amount of air. Kirito remembered what came next and tried his best to warn the others.
"EVERYONE, DODGE!" Was all he could shout. However, they weren't in time as Asterius unleashed its attack known as Numbing Detonation, causing all the Moonlight Cats plus Toran to get paralyzed and lose 20% of their health bars.
Almost as soon as the attack wore off, Asterius readied its hammer and slammed it down right in the middle of the group. It didn't hit anyone directly but as the attack was more focused on splash damage, everyone got heavily damaged and were launched far away. But as Asterius went to pick it's hammer back up, Kirito was already jumping towards it's back, preparing a sword skill which he shouted as it landed.
"SPINNING BLADE DANCE!" His two blades shone purple as he started he turned his body sideways mid-air and started spinning as his first blade slashed at the boss's spine.
The way the Spinning Blade Dance skill worked was you would start spinning sideways in midair with both swords extended on either side of your body and upon making contact with the first sword, you would attack with each spin. Basically, the more and longer the player spun, the more damage it did.
Kirito slashed at the boss's spine more and more with every spin and because of the direction he spun, he slowly traveled up its spine and as he reached its neck, he stopped spinning and brought in his blades for the finish of the attack, which was crossing his arms and unleashing a cross strike straight to the back of its head. Altogether, this caused Asterius to lose a huge amount of health.
But that wasn't all. Before it could recover, Toran activated a lunging skill of his own called Piercing Rocket which launched him at a quick speed in whichever direction he so desired. He used this to launch himself at the stomach of the boss and pierce his small sword right in the belly button. This specific skill was more for toppling things much larger than the player so as a result of the impact as well as the damage, Asterius fell backward and landed on it's back, meaning it was now in a prone state.
This meant that for the next few seconds, everyone could unleash their strongest attacks on the prone enemy and the boss wouldn't be able to do anything but take it, and that's exactly what they did. Kirito and everyone else laid waste to the boss's body while Kaba, seen as he had a hammer of his own went for the head.
"CRUSHING BLOW!" Kaba shouted the name of a hammer skill as his weapon shone red before he brought it down as hard as he could and crushed Asterius' skull. A loud crunching sound could be heard as Kaba's hammer destroyed the boss's face. This, along with all the large amounts of damage that everyone else was dealing at the same time, caused Asterius to go into the yellow of its last health bar.
"Alright, one more hit and then the secret boss comes!" Toran shouted as Asterius finally recovered from it's prone and jumped back onto its feet.
The battle had barely been going on for a few minutes and Asterius was barely holding on to life. Nevertheless, it roared again. But this time it was louder and longer, and it quickly threw it's hammer away right after.
"Everyone watch out! He's going berserk! He's going to be faster and stronger but if we can outmaneuver him, we can finish it!" Kirito shouted the plan and everyone nodded as Asterius charged at them like an Ox as it growled loudly.
Everyone managed to dodge out of the way but it almost immediately turned around and charged again at the nearest person, Toran. Luckily, Toran was able to sort of block with his sword but the beast still knocked him quite a ways away.
Even then, before he could even hit the ground, Asterius charged at him again. But this time, instead of blocking, he pointed his sword forward which meant that the charging Asterius, who was now in berserk and couldn't think properly, ran headfirst into Toran's sword. Obviously, Toran got hit back again but because the full length of his sword had penetrated the boss's head, it roared it pain once more, and in the time it used to roar, Kirito was already behind it with a Horizontal Slash skill which slashed at the beasts hind legs.
This final attack brought the boss's last health bar to it's red.
A few seconds went by with nothing happening, but all of a sudden, Asterius' body started to turn a bright white and it eventually became so bright that it blinded everyone. The blinding lasted about five seconds and for the most part of it, they could hear Asterius roaring in pain. But as the light died down, the roaring stopped and when they could finally see again, Asterius' body was nowhere to be found.
"Did we win?" Ranta asked as the seven of them looked around in confusion.
"Maybe. If that's the case then this boss fight wasn't at all as hard as I thought it was going to b-" Jin got this far into his sentence before he was suddenly hit hard from behind and sent rag-dolling into the wall. The impact winded him as he struggled to make a vocal reaction to the impact and fell to the floor. He only had 10% of his health gauge left.
The rest of them spun their heads around to look in the direction the hit came from and what they saw was a floating black sphere, no bigger than your average soccer ball, that was oozing with strange darkness. The six warriors had no time to comment on their new enemy as it very quickly moved past them and attempted another attack on Jin who had just started to get up.
"JIN!" Kaba shouted as reached out his hand in desperation. Jin heard his leader's shout and as such, rolled out of the way of whatever was coming towards him.
He barely even knew there was a new enemy present and the roll was pretty pathetic but considering his circumstances, Kirito didn't blame him. The black orb made contact with the wall and sent a pretty big pile of dust around.
"Don't worry guys, I'm fine. Nothing a little potion can't handle," Jin reassured as he grabbed a potion out of his inventory. However, before he could use it, a small bright light could be seen from within the dust and while he was distracted, a brilliantly white laser shot out of the dust cloud and pierced Jin right through the stomach, easily passing through him and coming out the other side.
The laser only lasted two seconds but as it died down, they all looked on in horror as Jin slowly fell to the ground once more. He looked over at the rest of the group with shock on his face. Kirito watched as he witnessed one of his newfound friends explode in a pile of little virtual crystal shards.
It was a sight that, for just a moment, made him want to scream but luckily remembered that he wasn't really dead.
Even so, in a matter of seconds, Jin would respawn in the Chamber of Resurrection in the Town of Beginnings with absolutely none of the items, weapons or stats he had previously had ten seconds ago.
Kirito turned his head to face the rest of the Moonlight Cats and saw nothing but shock and horror on their faces. He understood and shared their feelings, to watch a friend die right in front of you isn't and will never be easy to watch. Even in games like ALO where death has no price, he would still get this painful feeling in his heart when a mission would go wrong and Lisbeth or Leafa or any of his friends would get killed.
However, as Kirito looked around he found that not all of them were in shock. Toran alone stood tall with almost no change in his expression and maintaining his determination even in the face of such a loss. Perhaps he was on the opposite side of the spectrum to Kirito, having seen so many people die in the old SAO that it almost didn't bother him anymore. Or could it be that the eighteen whole months he spent wandering a black abyss with no way of coming back to the real world affected his ability to show emotion? Either way, Kirito admired Toran's ability to stay relatively unphased by the death of Jin before a sudden voice snapped him out of his thoughts.
"You…you bastard!" Ranta shouted angrily as he attempted to charge the floating black orb, but he was halted by Kaba.
"Stop Ranta! I'm not going to let you do something reckless," The Moonlight Cats leader said as he held his arm out in front of Ranta.
"That thing just killed Jin, and you expect me to not do anything!?" Ranta shouted in retort, but Kaba fought right back.
"And what happens if you then die as well, huh!? I'm not going to have two deaths on my hands!" These loud but sorrowful words of Kaba's silenced Ranta. "Let us fight this thing carefully so we don't lose anyone else,"
"Fine," Ranta spat. He wanted nothing but the blood of his enemy on his hands, but he also understood that any more deaths would be much worse. So he and everyone else re-postured themselves for a battle of wits. The black orb quickly moved to attack Kirito but was deflected and used it's momentum to direct itself towards Kaano, who less skillfully but still successfully deflected it as well. After multiple unsuccessful charge attacks, the black orb charged up a second laser-like the one it used to kill Jin.
"Dodge!" Kaba shouted and everyone ran in random directions. This caused the black orb to get confused on who to focus on and eventually just shot it at a seemingly random location. The mark where it hit was close to where Maya was but she seemed unphased by it. After the attack, Kirito noticed that the black orb started to shake violently. With no idea of what was about to come, he could only warn the others.
"Somethings about it happen! Get ready!" To this, everyone got their guards up. However, what did happen was beyond what they expected. An ear-piercing screech suddenly erupted within the chamber and caused everyone to writhe on the floor in pain. Even Kirito, who thought he had a high enough level to be immune to vocal damage.
As this continued, the Orb suddenly moved for a charge attack and hit Kaba quite hard away from everyone else. This caused his health bar to drop very near to the red zone. While Kirito was focused on Kaba's rag-dolling body, he suddenly felt someone tap him on the shoulder to get his attention. He whipped his head around to find that it was Maya, who was somehow managing to move despite the pain.
"Kirito, I-I have an idea," she said while cringing from pain.
"What is it?" Kirito barely heard her as he was trying to block his ears but managed to reply.
"Do you t-think you could distract that orb for me? I-I think I have a way to defeat it but I need t-to charge it up first," Maya asked as she started to defy possibility and stand up during the attack. Not wanting to be done up by a girl, Kirito started to stand up as well.
"I'll try, b-but I don't know how long I can. What do you want me to do?" Kirito asked as he surveyed his enemy which was now focused on Maya.
"J-Just attack it and keep its attention on you. I know it's a lot t-to ask but it's the only way I can think of," Maya replied as she pulled her sword to her chest and closed her eyes. Suddenly, a soft white light enveloped the hilt of her sword as she focused on what appeared to be a sword skill.
"Got it," Understanding that she was putting her complete faith in him to overcome this challenge for her, he to focused himself. "I won't let you down," Kirito only thought that last part so as to not distract her from her sword skill.
As he readied his swords, the black orb charged at him and he did the same. Kirito forced himself to ignore the impossibly loud noise and raised his swords to strike downwards. The black orb quickly zipped out of the way of his attack and changed its angle. However, Kirito did the same and swung his Dark Repulsor to the side.
The black orb must not have seen this quick reflex coming and quickly retreated to avoid the sword. However, just as quickly, it flew up above Kirito and started to descend on Kirito with a crushing attack. Unable to find a way to counter-attack this, Kirito raised his swords in a cross formation to block the crush. The impact caused sparks to fly everywhere. The black orb momentarily tried to break through Kirito's defense but quickly gave up and retreated once more.
Kirito caught his breath while the black orb flew quickly around the room. Every time it would try to target Maya, Kirito would be right in between them ready to block until finally, it decided to shine white, which meant it was charging up its laser and it was directing it right at Maya and Kirito. The other's, who had retreated to the far side of the room, cried out in alarm.
"Maya! Kirito!" They all shouted as loud as they could despite the screeching noise.
"Maya? Not to be rude but you might want to finish soon," Kirito warned as he stood in front of her. He got no reply, as he thought he would, but he hoped that his words had reached her.
As the black orb's laser got ready to fire, Kirito realized that Maya wouldn't be ready before it shot. So he crossed his swords in front of him and fixed his posture as best he could. Right at that moment, the black orb fired the white laser and in the blink of an eye, it shot right into the middle of Kirito's swords.
The impact almost pushed Kirito into Maya but he nailed his feet into the ground and fought against the power of the laser no matter what. For some unknown reason, this laser was constant and it continued to blast Kirito's swords in an attempt to break them. But Kirito didn't let his determination sway for a single moment. But as he continued to defend, the laser seemingly started to gain more power. At some point, he started to be forced backward. The meter-long distance he was from Maya turned into half a meter, then a quarter. Just as Kirito was about to be knocked into her, he heard a loud voice from behind him.
"NOW KIRITO, GUIDING LIGHT!" She shouted as Kirito tucked and rolled to the side. As soon as Kirito left her view, her skill that she had just activated fired a beam of light right towards the black orb that completely canceled out the laser it was firing. The beam of light shot towards the black orb and enveloped it completely.
After a few seconds, the beam of light that Maya shot dispersed, as did the ear-piercing noise. The aftermath of the attack was a cloud of black smoke dispersing in all directions and suddenly, in the middle of the big circular room appeared a big message on a virtual board.
Congratulations!
Wowee, what a crazy fight scene that was :O
I'll be honest, this fight scene underwent multiple rewrites cause there was always something about it that displeased me but I'm quite happy with the end result, maybe could've still been better but since when has my story been perfect.
On a different note, I feel like I've apologized way too much for this story's lack of a consistent upload schedule so I ain't gonna bore you with more sloppiness. Probably best you got used to it anyway.
Peace out! Until next month lmao.
pls excuse all spelling and grammar errors, proofreading ain't my strong suit.