A/N: Some of the technique translations may not be accurate as I just used google translate so please bare with it. It will be a fight intensive chapter this time. Sorry about the timeskip.
Time passed quickly as Zoro and the clearing group advanced on their floors. The clearing group had just entered the 74th floor, ready to find the boss room with Asuna, Kirito ventured forth. Zoro had just finished the 99th floor and was choosing his System Bypass.
"Well Zoro it's been about two years since you've been here. I think you're ready for this, with all your new techniques and Bypasses you should be alright with this final boss. As usual you want the take less damage Bypass I assume?"
"Yeah, it's been a fun two years, I have become stronger, but not strong enough."
"I should give you a heads up, the final boss should be well known to you, it's Asura. I changed it specifically for you so there will be no maze. It will be the ultimate test for you Zoro. Now go and make me proud, finish the game."
Zoro jumped up onto the pedestal and took a swig of his Endless Sake Bottle.
"It's gonna be a fun fight then. I've decided," He had a distant look in his eyes with a smirk on his face as he said it "I'm gonna help the other guys get out, my captain would've done the same anyway..."
Deep in thought, Zoro teleported off to the next floor.
'Luffy, how are you holding out? You can't go off and be the pirate king without me seeing it you reckless idiot.'
Zoro found himself in a huge coliseum the size of a city, and in front of him stood Asura. It was bigger than the size of Oars back on Thriller Bark, greatly resembling a great Daibutsu with three heads and six arms. It was hovering above the ground with its legs folded and its eyes closed.. In each of its six arms, it held a massive sword. Above it, its name was shown with ten health bars. The swords swords were similar to a Scimitar, only they were much longer and more curved.
Zoro drew his three katanas and activated his version of Asura.
"Kiki Kyutoryu: Asura"
Zoro's four new arms and two new heads held copies of his swords. Asura rushed forward with its six swords for an opening attack, Zoro used all his nine katanas to block the blow. The swords clashed and a shock wave was created, causing a small crater in the ground. Zoro was being slowly pushed back as Asura pressed forward its six swords. Zoro could only watch as he was slowly overwhelmed by the strength Asura possessed.
He jumped back to try and catch his breath, Asura decided to then change tactics, it pulled its swords back and used two of them to pincer zoro's sides. A third was sent for the top of Zoro. Zoro used three of his swords to block all the attacks. Asura then used two more of his arms to attack Zoro diagonally in between the swords at the sides and the top. Seeing it coming Zoro had no other choice but to move one sword from each side to defend the blow.
Zoro was slowly being squashed as the five swords continued to push against his. Unfortunately for Zoro, Asura still had one more sword free. Asura used the sixth sword to horizontally press on the sword directly on top of Zoro. Zoro groaned as the force his head had to take was multiplied. With no other option left, Zoro was forced to use a technique that drained him of his stamina greatly just to survive.
"Kyutoryu: Nisensanbyakuyonju Pound Ho!" (2340 Pound Cannon!)
Each of Zoro's nine blades released a blast of force at the swords of Asura. Using the time that the swords were repelled, Zoro jumped back panting. One of the blasts strayed and hit Asura's face, Asura's first health bar went down by about 1% .The technique had used up 35% of his stamina. He had barely survived Asura's second attack at a high cost. The difficulty of this level was much harder than the previous boss, "The Fan Blader". It was a massive propellor that could shoot out its blades that had a homing effect. It had taken Zoro just some effort to defeat, but Asura had as easy. Even one of his most powerful techniques had only barely repelled Asura's blades.
He was backed up into a corner, he took a swig of his Endless Sake Bottle to replenish his stamina to the maximum and ran trying to think of a way to get through Asura's defense. As he ran, he was constantly seen by either one of Asura's three heads. He had to somehow get behind Asura to deal any kind of damage without having to go through the massive swords.
He barely had time to finish his train of thought before Asura started fanning out its swords horizontally to cut at Zoro's feet, forcing him to jump to avoid the slashes while running. Having enough of this, Zoro landed on one of the swords and ran up it while hastily launching '360 Pound Cannons' at Asura. Asura simply tilted the sword 90 degrees and Zoro was forced to jump off before he slipped off the blade, only to be cut by one of Asura's other blades. He took a look at Asura's life bar and saw that he only managed to reduce it to about 97%.
"What is with this thing, the amount of health it has is insane, all those '360 Pound Cannons' wore me out but it barely scratched Asura. Guess there's only one way to deal with this thing."
Zoro took another swig of sake as he checked his health, it was at about 90%. Zoro decided to change tactics as Asura went for another pincer attack on Zoro. This time, instead of blocking the blades, Zoro decided to use all his swords to focus on attacking one of the swords until it broke. He jumped out of the way and quickly continued to attack at the weak spots of Asura's first blade. He had no idea how long it would take for one of the boss' swords to break but it was the only choice he had left as his attacks did minimal damage to Asura, whereas Asura's did a lot to him.
Asura soon changed his tactics and went back to cutting at Zoro's feet. Zoro now jumped up above the blades and then used his katanas to cut at the blade as it passed below him, damaging it slightly. After about ten minutes of alternating attack patterns, Zoro finally landed the final hit on Asura's first sword. It was split into two and Zoro, panting heavily from the onslaught of attacks he had to dish out to break the blade, ran to the end of the coliseum to catch his breath and snack on some 'Roasted Demonic Chicken Meat'.
Asura let out a terrifying roar as it discarded the broken sword and reached up and grabbed it tenth health bar. The health bar transformed into a more terrifying version of the sword that Zoro had destroyed. It was now blood red and its handle was on fire.
'So it loses a health bar for each sword I break, I guess that's its weakness.'
Now that it was down a healthbar, Asura changed tactics.
With its six swords, it now uses them to aim at Zoro directly, going straight for him in order. Zoro dodged the first blade and started running, only to have the other five land just right behind him one by one. Even stopping for a moment would prove to be fatal. He had to find a way to damage one of the remaining five blades without getting cut.
Zoro continued to run around Asura and started to hurl '360 Pound Cannons' at the blades behind him. They slowly took damage until Asura changed attacks. Now all six blades, three at each side pincered Zoro and forced him to a halt. Overwhelmed by the force of the six blades, Zoro once again had to use another exhausting technique.
"Kyutoryu: San Gorilla, Roku Gorilla!" (Three Gorilla, Six Gorilla!)
With his strengthened arms, Zoro managed to push back the blades but the technique drained his stamina by 1% every 5 seconds. Asura changed back to its earlier tactic and again started to use its blade to attack Zoro. After running for a little while, Zoro thought of an idea. He stood in stance and waited for one of the blades to come for him. He used three swords at the top to block the strike and his six swords at the side to barrage the sword with attacks whittling down its durability with his strengthen strikes. As the second blade began to come down on the first, Zoro used the six swords to help the first three to push off the blade.
After dodging the second blade, Zoro resumed running and launching '360 Pound Cannons' at the blades behind him. When Asura's swords finally rotated back to the one that Zoro had damaged greatly, Zoro used one of his newer techniques in an attempt to destroy the blade.
"Ittoryu: Sansenrokbyaku Pound Ho!" (3600 Pound Cannon)
With this final attack, the blade could withstand no more as too, broke. Asura again reached up and pulled its ninth health bar this time. This time the blade was different from the first, it was cold blue instead of red and the handle was ablaze with an azure flame. Zoro took this time to disengage his 'Six Gorilla' and replenish his stamina with some herbs he had found throughout the dungeon as they worked quicker than the sake. He took a look at Asura's first health bar and saw that his attacks had brought it down to about 94% since he was not really aiming for Asura but rather its swords.
With another sword came another attack pattern from the boss. Now with its two newer swords, Asura once more changed its attack pattern and this time crossed the flaming blade and a purple fire engulfed both the blades. Asura aimed the blades up and multiple purple balls of fire shot up into the sky. Zoro dodged the fireballs skillfully but what surprised him was that at where the fireballs landed, little imp like creatures were created, all surrounded by blueviolet flames wielding two distorted looking daggers. The name above them,'Hell-Spawn Imp' seemed to suit them nicely.
With the creatures spawned, Zoro now had to deal with the Imps and Asura's blades at the same time. In order to rid himself of any distractions, Zoro decided to focus on the Imps first, he was quickly overwhelmed by the Imps and had to strain himself to keep up with blocking their barrage of attacks. They agilely leapt and spun with their daggers in attempts to strike Zoro. While distracted by the vast numbers of Imps, Zoro had neglected Asura and was struck cleanly on the shoulder by one of Asura's four remaining original swords and had to use all his strength to remove it from his shoulder before retreating to a safer area to heal up.
The attack had heavily damaged Zoro and was left with 60% of his health, he had to use up some of the health potions that some of the dungeon monsters had dropped to heal himself and replenish his heavily expended stamina. Staying in his Asura state was heavily taxing on his stamina and had to continuously replenish it to continue staying in his Asura form. The Imps had largely covered the entire coliseum and Zoro had resigned himself that he had to focus on Asura as there seemed to be countless of them.
Zoro ran back into the fight and slashed away any Imps in his way as he made his way to focus on Asura's swords again. When he was within range of Asura's blades, he shot out three '1080 Pound Cannons' at the middle left blade, two connected but the third strayed and collided with a group of unfortunate Imps. Asura, used the flat of its blades to launch several Imps at Zoro. With this many Imps surrounding him, the heat from their flames making him sweat profusely, Zoro had little choice but to get rid of them. Zoro used the technique he had used to clear large swarms of enemies to rid himself of the crowd of Imps. He jumped into the air and spread out his katanas.
"Kyutoryu: Sanmanroksen Pound Miraboru Ho!" (Nine Sword Style: 36000 Pound Disco Ball Cannon)
Zoro fired out wave after wave of '36 Pound Cannons' off in every direction, sometimes hitting Asura but mainly clearing out most of the 'Hell-Spawn Imps'. After the barrage of '36 Pound Cannons' Zoro landed unsteadily as it had completely exhausted him to the point where he could barely keep up Asura. He went into a clearing from his barrage and hid behind a rock, he was close to completely out of stamina and was forced to consume one of his rarer herbs. It was a hard and barely plant like herb which was chocolate brown in colour and only found in specific places of certain floors. Zoro ate it and instantly felt energised.
He glanced over to see that his barrage had reduced Asura's health by only another 1% as they were significantly weaker than his '360 Pound Cannons'. As he tried to think of a way to attack Asura without getting overwhelmed by the Imps. He saw many pillars supporting the coliseum and had an idea. He slashed at the top and bottom of one of the pillars, dislodging it and used a '1080 Pound Cannon' to launch it towards Asura. Prioritising avoiding a direct hit, Asura used a blade to block the attack and the blade had happened to be the one that Zoro had attacked earlier. As the massive pillar collided with the blade, it snapped and the upper end of the blade flew with the remaining parts of the pillar and struck Asura square in the chest, taking a noticeable amount of its health off.
Asura was now at 90% health as it reached up to grab its third health bar sword. The sword began to materialize but was now of a different design, the curve of the sword now had spikes jutting out. It was aflame by a cadmium-lemon flame. As Asura let out another roar, the next phase had begun. Zoro tried to conserve his herbs and drank some more of his Sake.
Now that it's swords had changed again, Zoro was concerned if he could still manage to keep up the fight. Asura put the yellow and blue flamed swords together, the fires merged to form a cinnabar green flame. As flames flew out of the centre of the crossed blades to cover the entire coliseum, Zoro used his arms to block the flames but was surprised to find that the flames did not burn, but felt rather cool. He then noticed that the Imps had been calmed by the flames, all the Imps then pixelated and the pixels gathered below Asura. A new monster had been formed, 'Devil-Spawn Troll' it read, it was as a quarter as big as Asura, rivaling the size of giants.
The Troll wielded an axe engulfed by a pale green flame and was sprinting towards Zoro. It jumped up into the air and dived with its axe out front in an attempt to surprise Zoro with an aerial attack. Zoro anticipated the attack and used his katanas to block the axe before it could connect. The strength of the creature had caught Zoro off guard, it continued to push its axe down onto Zoro's blades, the strength had overwhelmed Zoro and had to jump back. The axe strike continued to the ground where Zoro had been before and a huge cloud of dust was thrown up. When the dust had cleared, the crater the axe had created was revealed. Zoro doubted that he would be able to compete with this level of strength easily and activated his 'Six Gorilla' again. The Troll jumped out of the crater and stood in front of Zoro, now seeing it up close, Zoro saw how tall it really was. Zoro readied his stance and used another upgraded version of his older techniques. He paired two Shusuis, two Kitetsus and one Shusui and one Kitetsu together, forming three double blades.
"Kyutoryu: Sai to Ushi Bari Danmaku!" (Rhino and Bull's Horns Barrage)
He charged the Troll while using his three Wado Ichimonjis to block the axe as it came down above him. His hits all sliced the massive Troll as it his six swords barraged the Troll with cuts. As the troll fell over and pixelated, Zoro used what little remained of his energy to hide behind some fallen pillars before Asura started its next attack. The two techniques combined had completely run him dry of stamina and he had to disable his Asura mode to restore stamina. Now with only three swords left, he drank some Sake and used up the last of his stamina herbs. While waiting for them to take effect, he looked over the fallen pillar and saw Asura now crossing the yellow and red blades, creating a bright orange flame. The flame spread to cover Asura's entire body and Zoro saw its health bar rise slowly.
About to go out and face Asura, Zoro gripped his katanas and reactivated Asura. But what happened next had confused him greatly, Asura had grabbed three of its life bars and turned them into blades. Asura had crossed all six of them and two more health bars had flown on their own transforming into blades and formed a fourth cross. Asura's second last health bar had done the most surprising thing, it had melted together the four crosses to form a single huge sword. The sword was massive in size, it was three quarters as tall as Asura, as broad as Laboon had been and was as thick as a pirate ship.
(I pictured the sword as the upper part of the 'Double Bladed Staff' in Risen)
It became apparent that Asura's ten health bars had merely been for intimidation as nine had been used up in the end to power itself up, but its defense was so great that the single health bar was more than a challenge.
Asura's legs had uncrossed and it was now standing, appearing taller than it ever was before and now it's six eyes had opened. Now Asura and all of its swords were engulfed by a black flame. Standing tall, the great Daibutsu used its six strong arms to wield the great blade. As it moved, its steps shook the ground. The blade came down onto Zoro as he hurriedly used 'Six Gorilla' and blocked the strike, the shock wave created spewed dust out of the coliseum as a crater as big as a small town was created. Even with his heightened strength that could take all six of Asura's original swords at once, it proved useless against the new blade as Zoro felt himself being crushed under the new blade's immense force.
He knew he was fighting a losing battle, the impact itself had shown the strength of the new blade. Immobilized and unable to hold it back any longer, Zoro's stamina continued to dwindle as he pushed himself to hold back the attack. Asura brought the blade up, exhausted, Zoro fell to the ground as his Asura was deactivated. Laying flat in the crater, barely hanging on to his three swords, Zoro closed his eyes as Asura brought the sword down once more…
'I guess this is the end, and here I thought I could beat this thing. It ain't named Asura for nothing after all. It's been a fun two years, but I guess I wasn't strong enough.'
A familiar voice ringed in Zoro's ears as he had given up.
'Now now Zoro, where was all that confidence you had before, what about all the people you were going to save? What about going back to Luffy and the rest of the crew? What about being the best swordsman in the world? If you fail here, all these goals will be left unfinished.'
Realization dawned on Zoro as Kayaba spoke those words. He had promises to keep, people to save. He couldn't die here!
Regaining his will to fight, Zoro quickly did a spin and used the momentum to jump out of the way of the sword. As the sword hit earth, a mushroom cloud of dust was thrown into the air. Now determined to win, Zoro consumed every stamina item he had even the ones that gave barely any. He used them all at once and managed to refill his stamina to about 85%. Zoro puts all his confidence into a final attempt at defeating Asura, a combo of attacks that he had never attempted before.
"Kyutoryu: Asura: Ugui!" (Nine Sword Style: Asura: Piercing Drill)
Zoro launches himself upward towards Asura which had lifted its blade up to block Zoro. Zoro's technique continued to drill away at Asura's great sword until he lost his momentum and slow down. Using the remaining momentum, Zoro released a '2340 Pound Cannon' at the blade. It managed to blast the blade upwards slightly. Using the opportunity, Zoro fired off '36 Pound Cannons' behind him and used the recoil to fly directly in front of Asura's face but behind the sword. He readied his attack,
"Kyutoryu Ogi: Roku Gorilla Daibutsu Yaki Giri!" (Nine Sword Style Secret Technique: Six Gorilla Great Buddha Burning Slash)
As Zoro initiated his attacks, his swords were set alight and slashed at Asura. His six swords at the side slashed at Asura diagonally, the middle three slashed vertically. Finishing his slash, Asura's great form was consequently cut into multiple pieces.
As Zoro landed, he sheathed his swords and Asura was engulfed in flames. The final bits of its health bar dwindled away and it crumbled to the ground, pixelating away, leaving behind its great sword as the trophy. Strangely, even though he was completely exhausted just a few moments ago, Zoro felt himself still full of strength. He glanced to the corner and saw that he had been fully healed, behind him, he heard a familiar sound. He looked over to where Asura had once been to see Kayaba standing there with a smile on his face.
"Well done Zoro, you have completed the game, now I shall add in your System Bypass and all you have to do is head back out of the dungeon to get to the other players. When you see them, remember not to mention me, after all, I trapped them here."
"Yea yea, I got it you crazy old man now just how exactly do I help them."
"You simply have to defeat me on the 100th floor on the top. Also as another reward for finishing this dungeon, I shall give you a title."
Kayaba opened up the interface and keyed in a few commands, now beside Zoro's name, a title appeared.
'Santoryu Kenshi, Sword Art Online's Greatest Sword Master: Roronoa Zoro'
"It's a bit long don't you think? Well whatever, I guess it's fitting. Greatest Sword Master huh? I've come a long way since being a bounty hunter back in that Marine Base in East Blue. I still need to head back and get this title again by beating Mihawk."
"Well goodbye for now Zoro, when we meet again, it will be as enemies."
As Kayaba teleported away, Zoro stepped onto the ever so familiar pedestal and went back up to the 99th floor to begin his climb back up to the first floor.
*On the 74th Floor*
With the final strike, 'The Gleam Eyes' health bar was empty and it pixelated away.
"Is it...over?"
As the Congratulations appeared, Kirito fell back, exhausted and with only a minute amount of health left. His eyes felt heavy as his consciousness left him.
"Kirito-kun! Come on, Kirito-kun!"
Kirito awoke to Asuna above him, teary eyed, calling out his name.
After all the crying and worry was over, Kirito used a Healing Crystal and was back to full health. An announcement was suddenly broadcast to the entire game.
"Roronoa Zoro has cleared all 100 floors of the Hidden Dungeon, The Santoryu Kenshi has cleared the Hidden Dungeon."
Everyone in the boss room froze at the news.
"What the heck?! Someone cleared that thing?!" one of the army soldiers shouted.
"What? What is the Hidden Dungeon?" Klein asked.
"It's a dungeon below the Black Iron Palace, the mobs there are insanely strong, about level 50 or so, and the boss is said to be even stronger!"
"A dungeon like that exist? And someone cleared it?"
"Santoryu Kenshi…" Kirito said.
Everyone turned to see Kirito.
"Apparently I wasn't the only one who got a Unique Skill, I got Dual Blades, but he got Santoryu… Someone like that doesn't go unnoticed and I am sure I have never seen him before."
No one else had seen him either.
"My guess is that he has been in that dungeon since the game started, or at least within the first month during the mass suicides. He has been there for two years, training continuously without dying somehow. Soloing that insane dungeon."
"But that's impossible, even our bests couldn't get as far as half the dungeon before having to retreat!" the army soldier cried out.
"We should all just forget about it for now, it might be a system malfunction or something." Klein attempted to calm everyone down.
"Yeah, I guess so…"
A/N: I am going to be continuing this story until the end because I feel like it, it will take a while as I sometimes switch other to other things. I have the story mostly planned out in my head so updates will come quicker. Please Review, it really encourages me.