A/N: That next boss fight was a bit predictable isn't it, since he had made an appearance on the fifth floor. Dancing Fairies. I got that idea from the Alfheim Online in the show Sword Art Online. I thought it was clever, wouldn't you guys say?


DECEMBER 19TH, 2022. FLOOR 7, BAMBOO VILLAGE.

The seventh floor is nothing more than a calm grassland with few forests and old ruins. It's similar to the first floor. Only there's just one town. There are few houses through the field and only little monsters. The only monsters there are on this floor are in the field dungeons. It's like it's a peaceful land. It's too peaceful for some people cause instantly, they started forming an Assault Team to clear the floor boss.

Rokel is starting to feel better from the assault against Tyler. He hasn't really been able to leave from the safety of town zones, on his own at least. I don't really blame him. If anything, I figured it would be best for him to only leave with me and the rest of the Lunar Twilight.

Right now, I am browsing through the weapons shop of this town. I haven't been doing much progress in fighting with this sword from Shadow of Terror. It's too light and the damage is too weak for my combat of style. I need a better weapon, and so far I'm not making much progress.

I haven't seen that Tyler jerk since when I first met him. I'd say I may have scared him off, but I'm not convinced. Even after he said that it isn't over. If he dares show his face around me or Rokel again, I'll introduce him to a whole new meaning of pain.

The weapons shop only has few one-handed swords and none of them are any better than my new sword.

I leave the weapons shop, taking a small stroll around the town. I'm level 35 with 2784 HP. 8,210 people are currently alive in Warlords Wrath Online. So far, we have only cleared six floors. Will we ever reach the top? How long will we be trapped in this virtual world?

I'm now in search of the creator of this world: Kayaba Akihiko. He's got a lot to answer for his crimes of trapping innocent people in this death game.

"Hey, Lightning." I stop and turn to see it's Asuna and Lisbeth.

"Oh. Asuna. Hey." I say.

"The Assault Team are preparing for the next raid boss," Asuna says.

"Right...that might be a bit hard for me," I say. Asuna and Lisbeth wonder why then I explain the situation to them. "The sword I got from Shadow of Terror is no good for me, and my old weapon is hardly much use anymore. I need a new weapon."

"I see. Well, Lisbeth here is a Blacksmith." Asuna says.

I look at Lisbeth hearing that. "That's right." Lisbeth opens her menu, accessing it until a window appears in front of me. It's a list known as 'Blacksmith'. "I make up-to-date weapons. Scroll and see what you look."

"Uh...sure." I scroll through the Blacksmith list. Scroll through all kinds of mail armor, then I get to weapons. Maces, axes, two-handed weapons. Up until I finally get to one-handed swords. There are only eight total one-handed swords, but there is a heavy one-handed sword that interests me:

Shadow Twilight

Damage: 87-112
Speed: 2.10
Level: 31
+11 Strength
+6 Dexterity
+3 Agility

"Uh...How about this one. 'Shadow Twilight'?" I ask.

"Oh. Excellent choice. Now we just need the materials." Lisbeth says.

"Materials?" I ask.

"That's right. Starting with the metal." Lisbeth says. "There's some Iron Ingot's on the field dungeon on this floor I'll need to forge the sword."

Of course. I should have known that. "All right. We'll just form a group and get the material's."


FLOOR 7, DOMINATION POINT.

All of our friends were busy, we can't even get a cleric, or even a Dreamer, to heal us up. All we could get was the Shadow Sniper, Silica, from Lisbeth's guild. So the four of us take on the field dungeon: Domination Point. It's a fortress of that NPC team: The Metal Horde. I'll be honest, I kind of did miss these crazy pigheads. Haven't seen them since the first floor.

Lisbeth is guarding all over their attacks. She constantly switches places with me and Asuna so we can attack them. I'm hardly doing much progression in damages with this sword. This is why I came to this dungeon: To get a stronger weapon. I'm wondering if it's a mistake to do that unless the weapon or armor I'm wearing is doable for such farming.

We are now walking down the hallway. "Looks like we've cleared all of the mobs on this floor," Asuna says.

"Did you get the materials?" I ask Lisbeth.

Lisbeth checks her item storage in her menu. "Not enough. We'll need to go deeper into the dungeon."

How great. So we walk to the B1F of the dungeon. We weren't so lucky, cause as soon as we enter the hallway, we're being attacked by three snipers. All three of them are shooting at us. When we are being attacked by a sniper, a prediction line is made. It shows us where the bullet or arrows they fire is fired directly at.

The snipers are shooting rapidly with their guns. We are forced to take cover behind the blockades. Silica panics, holding tightly on her feather dragon pet screaming. "They're shooting like crazy," Lisbeth says.

After a while, they've stopped firing. I assume they're reloading. I take a peek over. But as soon as I get a vision, the prediction lines are in place and they start shooting. The moment the first bullet is shoot, I back down in the blockade.

"Lisbeth! Can't you block the bullets?" I ask.

"My shield's not big enough to block that much," Lisbeth says.

"FOR THE METAL HORDE!" One of the Snipers shouts.

'Oh shut up.' I shout in my head.

"What are we gonna do!?" Silica yells in worry.

I wonder what we can do. We don't have a Cleric to back us up or a Wavemaster to protect us with an arcane barrier. I think for a possible solution.

I remember this one training session back in the Guardian Corps. Where they shoot acorns at us as a substitute for bullets. You only make that mistake once. I'm lucky I wasn't around during that time. The objective is to deflect each of the acorns. If you never get shoot, you'll survive.

I wonder if I can be able to do the same in this world. "Everyone stay down," I say.

Everyone looks at me confused. As soon as the Snipers stops firing, I stand up, moving right out into the open. "Lightning! What are you doing?" Asuna asks.

The snipers are reloading, and I take out my sword. The prediction lines appear directly at me. They start firing at me. The first bullet comes directly at my head. I swing my sword upwards and it deflects the bullet. I move around, swinging and spinning my weapon, both at high speed. I'm guessing having a light weapon isn't so bad when it comes to this.

Most of the bullets I deflect flies back to the Snipers. One of them dies and the other two reloads, that's when I charge at them and strike them. My attacks only manage to kill one of them while the other continues shooting at me. I grab the Gun by the tip, not putting my hand over the shooter, and pull the gun away from me so I can cut off this creature's arm. Once that's done, my weapon charges up and I do multiple impales on him until he dies.

I take a moment to catch my breath. I turn to see Silica, Asuna, and Lisbeth walking up to me, with shocked expressions. "How...how did you do that?" Lisbeth says.

"I have never seen anyone dodge and deflect the bullets like that," Asuna says. "What kind of skill is that?"

"Uh..." I don't really know how to answer that. "That's...just something I picked up. That's it."

I continue moving forward, leaving the other girls behind. "Oh fine. Don't tell us." Asuna says upset.

We continue down the dungeon, up to B3F. We are near to our quota for my sword. We enter the last room of the dungeon, where the boss is at. We're not sure if we're strong enough to take it. Facing a mini-boss with a Dreamer, a Swordsman and a Cleric with no Crusader was one thing, but we have no healer this time.

We enter the area. It's some massive forging room. We all look up as the massive molten pots are swinging around and pouring the lavas into the pits.

"Move faster! Garrosh Hailroar wants his arsenal delivered NOW!" In the center of the large room is a black orc in heavy plate armor. He turns and we see he has a white beard, an eye patch, and his right arm is a large sword. The sword arm kind of surprised me. "You the meddlesome humans who dare interfere with our work!? I'll have you all roosted and use your bones to pick my teeth!"

His cursor, name Iron Forger, and three health bars appears.

"Can we take him?" Silica asks.

"Maybe we can, if Lisbeth blocks most of his attacks and we dodge the rest," Asuna says.

We all charge in and attack the Iron Forger. Iron Forger is a tough fighter, but his attacks are slow. The way the fight went was Lisbeth blocks his three attacks, then I and Asuna strike at him, causing him to stagger. Silica stays back shooting with her bow.

Iron Forger loses his first health bar. Enraged, she dashes towards Silica, grabbing her by the neck with his hand. "I'll break you!" then smashes her on the ground. That did massive amounts of damage to Silica. She was at full health but was now brought down to 55%. He's surprisingly strange when not dealing with a Crusader. I hate to see what damage he can sustain on me and Asuna, shields or no shields.

Iron Forge dashes to Lisbeth, impale his sword arm into Lisbeth, and lifting her off her feet. "The ground grows red with your blood!" Iron Forger says.

Lisbeth's health drains in the process. Frankly, that line seems a bit off since we don't spill blood, just damaged data. We all focus our attacks on the Iron Forger. We had to down half a bar of his health to free Lisbeth. She lives with only 807 HP out of 3231. Lisbeth casts an instant healing spell to restore little of her health.

"Bring in the Siegemaker!" The gates on the west side of the room open and some giant cannon tank comes out of it.

"Oh crap," I say.

The Siegemaker drives around shooting cannons at us. We dodged it at the last second, only suffered minor damage. Could have been worse. Asuna and I handle the Siegemaker. Silica and Lisbeth are the only ones that have to worry about its cannon fire. Lisbeth constantly blocks the Iron Forgers attacks and using healing spells on herself. Whatever eight percent of health she loses, she regains ten percent.

The Siegemaker breaks and falls apart, then shatters. We continue attacking the Iron Forger until he's at his last health bar.

"Snipers! Gun them down!" I'm on alert hearing that. I look up at the ledges above us, to see snipers getting to positions.

"Not good," I say under my breath. The prediction lines come in place. There are so many of them, it's like the entire room is now red. And they're all aiming at Silica. "Silica! Watch out!"

Silica looks up, but it's too late. They all start firing at her. Silica screams, but luckily, I was able to push her out of the way just before the bullets make contact. Her feathered dragon wasn't too lucky, the little creature took a couple of bullets. Silica notices the creature's peril.

"Pina!" She shouts in worry.

Pina collapses on the ground, with its Health bar greatly draining. Silica is overwhelmed in sorrow and fear. She doesn't worry about her surroundings or the fight.

"Come on! Let's finish him!" Lisbeth shouts.

I look to see Iron Forger is down to half a health bar. With no hesitation, I charge right in, striking at him with my charged attacks. Iron Forger takes the hits very hard, staggering even. The snipers are in shooting position again, the prediction lines aim for all of us except for Lisbeth.

Asuna and I deliver the final blow, which ends Iron Forger's life. The pathetic orc collapses and glows. "No...my work...all that hard...work." then he shutters.

I positioned myself to deflect the bullets from above, but they never came. Instant, the prediction lines vanishes, and the snipers retreat. What a bunch of cowards. We all earn our results. No new weapon for me sadly. Guess it's meant for the best, we did come all this way for materials to forge myself one.

While Lisbeth is gathering the materials she needs, Asuna and I are standing by Silica, who's holding Pina in her hands with only 39 HP left.

"How's Pina doing?" Asuna asks.

"He's fine. But I'm worried." Silica says.

"Can't he be healed? Don't Shadow Snipers have some ability to heal their pets?" I ask.

Silica shakes her head. "No. Normally, Shadow Snipers aren't meant to be beast tamers. I'm probably the only one in this whole game who has a companion."

She probably is. "We can get him to a Cleric when we return to town," Asuna says.

Silica looks up at Asuna, smiles, and nods. "Well, I've got the materials," Lisbeth says approaching us. "So let's head back."


FLOOR 7, BAMBOO VILLAGE.

I'm standing in front of Lisbeth in her blacksmith shop while she's forging my weapon. As soon as we returned to down, Silica desperately searches around town to find a Cleric to heal Pina. I wonder why she's so fond of the feathery dragon. Could it have something to do with the real world? Just like I have that photo of me, Serah, and Hope?

I don't bother with it.

Lisbeth finishes forging the weapon. It glows bright red and the materials transform into a long one-handed sword. "Well. Here it is. Try it out." Lisbeth says.

"All right." I pick up the sword, doing a couple of swings with it. I am keeping my distance however so I don't harm Lisbeth or her other weapons in the display. Wait, why am I worried about Lisbeth? We're in a safe zone. I can't harm her even if I tried.

"How is it?" Lisbeth asks me.

"Heavy," I answered. "This will do nicely." I sheath the sword into its own holster. "How much should I pay you?"

"Money's not necessary," Lisbeth says.

"I insist. We went through all of that trouble just to forge the weapon." I say.

After seeing that, Lisbeth agrees. I pay 4000 Krystal's for it. Now I'm down to 5638 of them. Man, weapons so are pricey. Afterward, I leave the weapons shop.

I now have a weapon suitable for combat. But still...I think carefully. Back there, when I was deflecting the bullets, I was able to do it at high speed cause my weapon was so light. Would I be able to do it with a heavy weapon? I try it out once I was outside, repeating the same movements I did back there. It's slower cause the weapon is harder to swing fast. I'm guessing I should keep a light weapon in handy for stuff like that.

The way I used my real-life skills in this world. I did not think that was possible. Would I be able to reach beyond the limits to become stronger to save every from this dark world?

No matter. I'll do whatever it takes to end this world.