The Geocrawler let out a short pained clicking sound before quickly retaliating. It brutally swung its free claw at Celestia's neck without mercy. The sharp blade like inner claw of the Geocrawler quickly sliced through her neck leaving a large red glowing around her neck. Her health bar plummeted from a low green straight through yellow and without stopping into the red and disappearing, leaving a hollow health bar. As soon as her health bar emptied of all colour she was engulfed by a white glowing which kept getting brighter for a few seconds before exploding in a shower of glowing blue pixels leaving only a small ball of light which fell slowly to the ground. Like that, within a few precious seconds she was gone, dead, both here and in the real world.

Me and Sky stood there for a few seconds, taking in what had just happened, while the other four, still in combat with the Geocrawler, went on a full attack to try exact some form of revenge or to give us all a better chance of getting through the horde. This was the first death that had occurred on the front line for a number of floors and one that was completely unexpected due to her fighting skills. However the two of us were still surrounded by the uncaring Creeps, so we pushed aside our thoughts and fought onwards, carving our path of blood over to our comrades.

Once we had finally carved our way through the wall of creeps we ran as fast as we could towards the exit of the cave, we kept to the wall and didn't turn to fight the pursuing creeps which seemed to be instinctually drawn to their enemies without pause. The sunlight of the day covered us with a slightly dazing glare as we ran without caution away from the cave and towards our friends who were still firmly fighting the Geocrawler. The two of us stuck as close to the shadowed, steep hardened clay and dirt wall as we could to try and stay hidden from the raging Geocrawler and its varied natural weapons.

A few moments later we had passed the Geocrawler undetected, but instead of stopping to help the fight at hand we kept solidly running with only a quick glance and a nod from Sky in their direction. From the nod alone the four of them knew what to do, Aurora quickly detached from fight to collect the glowing orb of light dropped by Celestia before herself running after us, Andrew swiftly ran in front of us to lead the way back to the ambush point, while Oliver and Andrew B held the Geocrawler and the creep horde back a few precious seconds before running for all they were worth to avoid being caught.

The Geocrawler took a second to realise what had just happened giving the creeps time enough to swarm past in an attempt to chase down their fleeing prey. Once the Geocrawler had took in what was happening, and seemingly its AI had decided on a plan of action, it charged down after us, crushing all of the fleshy creeps that was too slow to avoid the metallic beast that the Geocrawler was. For us it was a mad dash for our lives, with the intention of reaching the agreed ambush point where the rest of the front liners waited and reaching it without loosing anyone else.

This mission now changed from a dungeon crawling battle for survival into a long distance endurance run with the threat of a quick but brutal death behind us, a death that never seemed to tire, never seemed to get uninterested and seemed content on exacting vengeance on the brave players that disturbed its rest and killed its kin. We ran through many canyon passes, each of different sizes from wide to narrow where the Geocrawler needed to tunnel its way through the stubborn walls. We went through shadowy overhang tunnels and through low walled passages where the sun poured its heat and brilliant light all around us.

After half an hour of the shattering run we could see our destination through the large crack of the opening rock walls, from what we could see of the gorge, form only a few hundred meters, was that it was a flat area which spanned for close to half a kilometre in each way from its centre point and led of into a number of other narrow and wide paths. However as we came closer and closer to the opening there was no sign of the large number of the Front liners who were supposed to meet us here with Ruru to carry out the plan to kill the Geocrawler.

The we hurtled through the opening at full speed without sign of slowing down, I felt a powerful hand grab onto my shoulder and drag me to the side and flat up against the wall, this happened to the others as players stationed along the walls pulled us out of the way. As I carefully went to place Ruby up against the wall in a sitting position the ground shook violently as the Geocrawler rocketed through the opening smashing through the narrowed walls sending huge clumps of rock in all directions.

The Geocrawler slid across the ground slowing it, while sending dust clouds into the air, allowing it to turn itself to face us all as we lined up against the gorge wall, somehow it must have known where we had gone to from the second it had entered the gorge. As the Geocrawler prepared for its next charge Ruru appeared out of nowhere calmly standing opposite the beast where she began to softly sing her lullaby.

"Minami kara kita tabigeinin
Ryūto katate no tabigeinin

Gin no i to o hito nade sureba
Po ro n porori n nemuri ni izanau
Nagai o hi-ge no sonchō-san mo
Gametsui buki-ya no ojisan mo

Hiroba de kakeru kodomo-ra mo
Yane ni nobo-tta kuro neko mo
Oeda de utau koma tori mo
Tetsu no yoroi no orochi mo
Toron Tororin mina nemuru"

As soon as she began to sing the monster stopped in its tracks, seemingly mesmerised by its soothing words, it soon lowered its claws and its spiked tail slumped slowly to the ground, by the end of the song its whole body had slumped to the ground and its green visor seemingly stopped glowing. From what we could see it had worked, Ruru's lullaby had put the savage Geocrawler to sleep. Slowly, from behind Ruru, Asuna and Kirito walked cautiously towards the presumed unconscious Geocrawler with their black and white blades drawn and ready.

When they stood right in front of its no longer glowing eye Kirito tapped the visor, now level with us, with his sword producing a somewhat hollow sound, he then raised his blade in both of his hands and stabbed down onto the visor sending black sparks flying as the weak glass smashed. Asuna seemed to move back slightly in disgust of what she saw behind the shattered visor, before following up Kirito's attack with a strong swipe at what I assumed was the eye. Seemingly happy that it was truly asleep Asuna turned around and waved us all over to it, before both she and Kirito continued to stab and slash at its exposed eyeball.

At the wave everyone huddled against the gorge walls slowly advanced over to the vulnerable boss where they joined in on the killing without much remorse. I however slumped down onto the ground still completely exhausted from the run, I never was one for long distance running, and finally went to sheath my blade back onto my belt. Once my sword was sheathed I reached into my belt bag and pulled out a large red and silver vial, I ripped the cork out with my mouth and quickly emptied the red elixir. As I drank the red liquid I felt my body begin to relax and saw that my health bar was slowly creeping back up into the green.

Not long after this the Geocrawler was into its last red bar of health, the beast was still sound asleep with seemingly no idea of what was currently happening to it, the plan had worked and after a week's planning and fighting we were finally getting off of this floor and continuing our way onto floor 100. Finally I saw the Geocrawler's health bar empty and quickly disappear from beside its head, the red crystal above its head shattered with its shards floating away while the rest of its body began to swell with blinding light. The attacking players halted their blades and stepped back slightly as the Geocrawler burst into hundreds of white glowing pixels which were taken away by the wind and on into nothingness.

The "Congratulations" appeared in the air and all of the players who had dealt damage to the Geocrawler had drop panels pop up in front of them, Kirito held Ruru up in the air with joy, Asuna sheathed her rapier and came walking back over to us, while most of the other players promptly began to make their way over to the floor labyrinth which held the door to the next floor.

To my side I heard movement from Ruby and saw that she was coming back into consciousness. At this is quickly got to my feet, with the help of the wall, and walked over to the other side of the opening where the others were slumped on the ground or leant against the wall. I looked to Aurora who was slumped on the ground next to Andrew, still holding the ball of light which Celestia had dropped. "I'll speak with Asuna, could you or Sky go to talk to Ruby, I'm not the sort of person you want to tell you that your friend had died?" I direct the question to Aurora as I knew Sky would be listening.

Aurora nodded and got up from the ground and slowly walked over to the now fully conscious Ruby, Sky looked at me for a few seconds before pushing off against the wall and following after Aurora. As they walked off I walked over to the approaching Asuna who seemed to have noticed our reduced number by the grim look on her face.

"We lost Celestia in the fight while she was protecting us." I say with a constricted voice, not wanting to go over the details of what happened.

"You've never lost someone you knew you could save, have you?" She said seriously, not prying for details, but unlike her normal self she had a somewhat sad and dark tone to her voice. I simply shook my head. "You've got to remember this may just be like real life where people die, and even though their loss is an extremely sad and depressing occurrence, this is a war and in war people must be left behind or sacrificed and those who remain must still fight on no matter what they may feel." She continued with a somewhat irritated voice. "Anyway I'll pass on half of my guild's profit from this and a good amount of the items to the Rangers and Ruby when I can, you pulled off a tough job today". She ended before turning and walking away towards the floor labyrinth.