A/N: My Warlords Wrath Online went on a late start on the next chapter. I was overwhelming with ideas on my Kingdom Hearts: Light Within The Dark I just couldn't stop writing it. Now, on with the Final Fantasy XIII/Sword Art Online crossover story.


MARCH 3RD, 2023. FLOOR 10, NORTHERN FIELD

The tenth floor of this death game is a barren desert wasteland. It's a large zone and yet there's only one town: Sharp Hill. It's not really my type of zone, I prefer the eighth floor.

Rokel and Silica really hit it off. I hear they have officially become a couple. More than that, Rokel's impulse on crushing pretty girls is starting to break. For once, we were able to hang out without him trying to ask me out or hoping to be his girlfriend. I'm just glad I was able to help the kid out.

Nearly two months have passed since we unlocked this floor, and we still haven't figured out why the entrance to the Elite Dungeon is locked. It's like we're missing a key or some kind of puzzle. Either way, we are trapped. But I refuse to accept this. I didn't come this far just to remain trapped within some virtual reality.

I growl and shout as I draw out my sword and start attacking the sealed door in frustration. My attacks aren't really doing anything but draining my weapons durability. But I didn't care, I'm going crazy.

Lately, I've been forgetting about the real world. I'm starting to believe that everything I see, the time and date, my HP bar really are what I see, even in the real world. I always know video games are mind-numbing. Then again it's possible this is happening cause I've been trapped in this game for four months straight while my real body is slowly rioting away on a hospital bed.

I soon become overwhelmed with fatigue. I'm now on my knees, panting with my sword in front of me in hand. "You know, attacking isn't really gonna open the door."

I look over my shoulder to see it's Kirito. "Shut up. Just leave me alone."

"What's with the attitude...okay, it's normal but you seem more frustrated," Kirito says.

Does he really have to point that out? I stand up turn to face him. "How can you still be so calm when we're trapped in this death game!? Let alone trapped on the tenth floor?"

"We're trying to figure this out. We'll have the Elite Dungeon opened up in no time." Kirito says. I just turn and groan in anger. "You need to relax. How about we head into a dungeon? Get some stress out by killing some monsters."

Maybe he's right, I could probably use a little de-stressing.


FLOOR 10, BURNING SWORD COVE.

Kirito and I wait at the entrance of the cave. We have set up a group of 5. I called in Hope and Vanille and Kirito called a friend of his. Hope and Vanille have arrived, but we're still missing one other member. I wonder who it is Kirito invited.

"Yo! Sorry I'm late." Just as I thought, it's Klein.

"Oh no! Not you again." I say with disappointment.

"Oh, nice to see you too, Lightning," Klein says. "Just relax, I'm all alone and I'm not going all charming on you."

"You better hope you're not, otherwise there will be a blade at your throat," I say in a threatening tone, walking up to Klein.

Kirito grabs me by the shoulder and pulls me back. "Easy there, Light." I settle down after Kirito stops me. "So, let's head in."

We walk right into the cavern. This dungeon is filled with those Orcs, but they're carrying swords and they're casing Witch/Wizard magic. Mostly enchanting their blades in flames. Klein and I handle fighting these Burning Swords guys while Vanille is standing back chanting her magic at them.

Kirito is attacking at high speed, he killed four of the orcs before we even had the chance. I am now in combat with one of the orcs. I block his attack with my sword, but another one joins in and strikes me. It hurt a lot, it knocked my health down to 27%. I strike back at the orc by cutting its head off and it dies. The other orc makes a strike on me. What surprised me is that when the blade hits me, I suffer no damage.

I'm being protected by Hope's holy shield spell. I look back to see him chant a healing spell. When he completes it, my health is restored up to 3968. Klein jabs his sword right through the orc's chest, killing it.

"Ah! These guys are too easy." Klein says, pretty cocky. Now he's just as arrogant as Snow.

"Up ahead is just the boss, right?" Hope says.

We all look at the dark hallway up ahead. "It would seem that way," Kirito says.

"With the five of us, it should be easy," Vanille says.

Vanille might have a point. I still remember my first dungeon boss. It was just me, Leafa, and Hope. We took it out with no problem. We walk right into the dark cave. When we walk in, the room brightens. Up ahead is a cliff over a pit of fire. A female black skin orc in molten armor stands there, doing some ritual.

She turns to see us. "You? Are you the fools who are interfering with the Metal Horde? I'll feed your flesh to the fires!" The orc ends the ritual and takes out her massive burning blade sword. Her name, Azuka Swordrage, and three health bars appear.

We all take out our weapons. "Ready?" Kirito asks. We all shout 'ready' then Kirito, Klein, and I charge right at Azuka Swordrage and Vanille chants her magic spells.

Our battle against Azuka was rough. I hold off her attacks by blocking with my sword and striking whenever she's open, while Kirito and Klein assault her from behind. Azuka Swordrage charges up her weapon until it's burning in flames. "Burn!" She swings her weapon at me as she uses her Inferno Strike.

The ability hits me right in the chest. Knocked out 20% of my HP, and left a Burn debuff. That's not good. I stand back. "Klein! Switch!"

"On it!" Klein takes my place as Vanguard and strikes Azuka Swordrage. Hope focuses on healing me. Vanille does her Starfall ability on Azuka. The arcane star drops on the boss, causing her to scream and stagger back. "You will all burn!" Azuka casts Burning Magma. Lavas burst out of the ground beneath each of us. I was lucky Hope restored some of my HP, cause that would have killed me.

Kirito does his Backstab ability, did some serious damage to Azuka. Her Hearth bar appears, and her last one is in red. "Together! Attack!"

We all jump in and attack the boss. Even Hope attacks with his holy magic. Azuka can barely fight back. The pain from our attacks was too much for her to handle, which is weird since she's only an NPC. We attack her until the last of her HP drops, and she dies.

We earn our Krystal's since none of us can level any further than 50. I do earn a heavy One-handed sword: Forgefire. The sword is the same blazing model of what Azuka uses. "Quite a sword you got," Kirito says.

"I'll say so." I take a deep breath through the nose then out the mouth as I stretch my back. "I do feel better. That really helped."

Hope, Vanille, and Kirito just chuckle. But that shortly dies when a strange sound happens. We're on alert hearing that. It's some click and rumbling noise almost like a secret door has opened.

We all turn to the wall to see some hidden window opens, revealing some lever switch. "What is that?" I ask.

"I think it's the trap switch I heard about," Kirito says.

"A trap switch?" Hope asks.

"It's something that appears in every dungeon after defeating the bosses in them on this floor. People never pulled it. Everyone thinks it's a trick made by Laughing Coffin." Klein says.

Laughing Coffin. How I despise that guild.

"At this point, only an airhead would dare to pull it," Kirito says.

Speaking of the devil, Vanille skips right to the lever. "I wonder what it does."

"Twilight! NO!" We all tried to warn her, but it's too late. She already pulled it.

We alert ourselves for any trap that's gonna be triggered or any Laughing Coffin members that are gonna ambush us. But nothing happens. All there was is some noise that sounds like a lock on a reinforced steel blockade door turned. Other than that, nothing else happens.

"What was that?" Klein asks.

"That certainly is weird..." I say.

"Let's just get out of here before trouble comes," Hope says.


FLOOR 10, NORTHERN FIELD

We return to the field. We still have no idea what happened with that lever. We do return to the sealed entrance of the Elite dungeon. Only, what surprised us is one of the locks of it is removed.

"What the? How did this happen?" Klein says.

"Did we trigger something?" I ask.

Hope takes a few steps ahead, looking up at the lock. "Could it really be..."

"What is it, Espeon?" Kirito asks.

Hope turns to face us. "How many dungeons are there on this floor?" From what I've heard, there are a total of five dungeons. "And how many locks at on this entrance?"

"Five for both of those questions," Klein says.

"Okay. So we just cleared a dungeon on this floor, and Twilight pulled a lever." Hope moves aside, showing the sealed entrance. "And when we return, one of the locks was removed."

I see where this is going. "Are you saying the way to open the dungeon is to do the floor dungeons?"

Klein, Vanille, and Kirito realize that idea as well. "The levers in the dungeons are what it takes to unlock the raid dungeon. Not even that was in the Beta Test. That's very clever of Kayaba."

"So, all we have to do is pull the levers in the other four and we'll unlock the Raid Dungeon," I say.

"Pretty much," Hope says.

"Then let's get started," I say.

The five of us raided each of the dungeons on this floor. Before we even started, Kirito and I return to the town and posted on the board about the trick to unlocking the Elite Dungeon. While everyone, even the Assault Team, are going to be viewing that, we are gonna handle unlocking the door.

There are four dungeons for us to raid:

Iron Fortress

Burial Grounds

Gladiator Pit

Blackstone Armory

One-by-one, we raid through each of them, taking out the bosses at the end of the dungeons. Hope was able to keep us alive, Kirito did a fine job killing the enemies fast. Klein and I hold them off as Vanguard while Vanille stays back, casting her magic on the hard guards.

Right now, we're raiding the Iron Fortress. Where we are taking on the Bleeding Empty Orcs. These Orcs are tough but we prevail against them, even took out Kilrogg Deatheye. We found the lever at the end of the chamber in the Fortress.

Once that was done, we move onto the Burial Grounds. This dungeon is just like an underground graveyard, filled with corpses and living souls. This place gives me the creeps.

The enemies we face here are Dark Avatars, they're more like Witches/Wizards to me with their dark magic to reanimate the dead. Pushing through this dungeon wasn't easy, the whole thing is like one giant maze.

"Stay together," I ordered.

We stay together, though it was hard for Vanille to follow along. Trying to skip ahead and look around. Does this girl realize the situation we are in? The Orcs are not the only ones we face in here, there are also skeletons and some giant worms that pop out of the ground.

"Worms? Why did it have to be worms?" Vanille says, terrified, hiding behind Hope for protection.

Kirito leans his head close to me, whispering. "What's with her?"

"I honestly don't know," I say.

Vanille pretty much cowered through the whole thing, well, only the battles against the Bone Decoyers, which are the giant worms. At the end of the maze, is the boss room.

The leader of the Dark Avatars: Ner'zhul.

We charge right in and attack the Orc. Ner'zhul was quite a strategy boss. There was a lot of moving around, even for the casters. It was hard for Hope to keep up with the healings though.

The lever appears right in the center by dark magic. Three down.

We next raid the Gladiator Pit. So far, the dungeon is just as underground as the Burial Grounds, only it's not as shadowy the only corpses there are are the dead gladiators. The orcs here are gray with long black hair. They are pretty vicious, I feel like we need an actual Crusader to take them on. But since it's only me and Klein playing Vanguard, Vanille has to help Hope with the healing.

In this one, we had to take like a minute or two to restore our HP and MP. In the end of this dungeon, the area of the boss fight is a Gladiator area. That makes sense, and our boss is the leader of the Broken Hand, Kargath Swordhand.

What's disturbing about this guy is that he has a sword for a hand.

"I will show you, weaklings, what a true champion is capable of!" Kargath says.

This whole thing is nothing compared to that Dreadzone combat in Doomstone. If I can handle that illegal underground combat sport, I can handle this joker.

The battle with Kargath was pretty crazy. We had to avoid falling into the tiger pits while luring this guy into the flames whenever he's charging at one of us. We defeated Kargath, then moved on to the final dungeon:

Blackstone Armory.


FLOOR 10, BLACKSTONE ARMORY

We make our way through this molten factory. This place is where the Metal Horde forge their weapons and armor. Long after we made it through the enemy, we are now facing against the dungeon boss: Darkhand.

Darkhand is a large gray orc in black heavy armor that burns molten on the inside. How can he stand that much heat? If I were in that kind of armor, I would be dead just putting it on.

Darkhand stands in place, his large hammer at hand. He snarls are us as he is down to his last health bar. "Darkhand is a tough guy," Kirito says.

Darkhand strikes, I block the attack with my sword. "Any ideas, Beta guy?"

"When his last Health Bar turns red, he'll destroy this floor and we'll be on the molten ground." Thanks for the advice, Kirito.

Klein and I attack Darkhand, Kirito also strikes from behind. Soon enough, we have Darkhand on his red HP. He smashes his hammer to the ground, shattering the floor.

"Burn! You will all BURN!" He sounds.

We now stand on the molten ground. The bad news of this is that it's causing us to lose HP, slowly increasing.

"Espeon! Keep us alive!" I say.

Hope casts his holy shield on all of us. That protects us from the Overheat damage, but not for long. Klein, Kirito, and I attack Darkhand with high speed and strength. Every attack Darkhand makes, both Klein and I block. On the last one, he draws Darkhand back.

"He's open! Now!" I shout.

Kirito makes the first strikes with his swords When he's done, Klein and I hit him with our Heroic Strikes. That did some serious damage on Darkhand, took out the last of his HP and he dies. The Overheat ends and our HP's stop depleting.

Klein, Hope, and Vanille collapse, they are exhausted from the fight. A lever appears right in the center of the field. First, it was formed from molten lava then hardens into steel. That's just strange, then again this is a virtual reality game.

I pull the lever, and then the lock on the Elite Dungeon opens from the distance.

"Well, that's the last of them," I say.

"Thank goodness. I never thought we would be able to leave this floor." Klein says.

"We should head back to town, prepare the Assault Team," Kirito says.

We all agree and head back into town. I feel a little unease about the next floor boss. If Kayaba put a special lock on the door, I have a feeling that this boss floor is going to be extremely dangerous.