In a flash of light, Zoro was transported to an area similar to the arena where he fought Asura, only it was significantly larger. He walked around and saw there were various buttons in the room he spawned in. They were labeled with different words.
In a few moments, Kayaba appeared in his usual lab-coated form.
"Ah Zoro, you'll be staying here for now, this place is an arena I built for you to train, the only way up here is a set of stairs which players have to clear out to reach the spectators stands. Now these buttons here, each push spawns a different variant of Asura for you to fight. From left to right, the first is an Asura that wields six swords all in their upgraded forms. The second will be wielding two of its gigantic blades, each with three arms on either side. The third will wield, similar to you, nine swords. The fourth will be an incredibly fast version of the first."
Miniature holograms of the bosses appeared below the buttons.
"The fifth one will be like the second, only with twice as much health, feel free to spawn multiple of them once you get comfortable with them. They get stronger after each death. Use them to train up and become stronger, many people will be coming after you. The last button will take you to the resting area."
Zoro tested all the bosses with breaks in between. The resting area was a bar with the song Bink's sake playing in the background. The grinding area had a huge gate, a lever opened and closed it. When opened, waves and waves of different mobs would flood through which he easily cut up. A week passed as he continued to grind Asuras, two at a time, developing and testing new techniques along the way.
After sorting everything out with Yui and everyone else, Kirito went off to the Hidden Dungeon, he remembered that he had easily taken out those frogs. Entering the dungeon, Kirito drew his blades and headed into the deeper parts of the dungeon, after the point where he encountered Zoro. As he continued exploring, he heard a wave of croaking in the distance. He turned back to see a swarm of Scavenger Toads, he couldn't see the end of them, the army of toads stretched to the opposite end of the hall and beyond.
'How did I miss this? Is this what Zoro meant by an infinite wave of Scavenger Toads?!'
Kirito drew his swords and prepared himself to grind the frogs as long as he could. A few hours passed and as predicted by Zoro, his battle healing and parrying allowed him to lose just a few point of health throughout the fight. The toads were endless in numbers and the swarm had only ended days later, Kirito immediately used a Teleport Crystal to get out. He was mentally exhausted and starving from the long grinding. He had not trained this hard in quite some time, he even forced his mind to ignore the hunger and thirst urges and focus on the battle.
Kirito went to Asuna's home to get some food. Upon arriving, he saw her cooking in the kitchen, the smell reached his nose and his stomach growled loudly.
"Kirito-kun! You look terrible, what have you been doing in that dungeon?!"
"I was cornered, those frogs we met at the entrance, thousands of them came after me when I went deeper into the dungeons. My Battle Healing allowed me to lose minimal health, but it tired me out. I can see why Zoro was so strong…"
'The amount of experience points and col I got from them went up as I leveled up, they seemed to scale in strength with me as well. That means that I train there without having to need to kill a lot more for each level.'
"Kirito-kun, you need to rest, you look really worn out." Kirito slumped as Asuna hurried to support him and sat him at the table.
"I'm fine! I have to get stronger, if I beat Zoro, it will decrease the number of deaths drastically! I'm the only one who stands a chance against him and his Santoryu!"
Asuna handed him some of the stew she had made and sat across from him.
"You need to get your energy up, if you don't eat anything for too long you'll collapse, not even you can be able to ignore hunger for too long."
Kirito wolfed down bowl after bowl of the stew that Asuna had made, at some point Yui had entered the room and was enjoying a lollipop Asuna had prepared.
"Aah, thanks Asuna, I feel much better now, I guess it wasn't such a good idea to just go storming in like that, sorry to worry you both."
"Papa, you better not be down there for too long, Mama and I get lonely!"
"It's fine Kirito-kun, just don't do something like that again. The boss fight meeting is next week at noon, make sure not to be late."
"I guess I should rest for a while, thanks for the food Asuna, I'll go meet Agil and then head out tomorrow."
"Be careful Kirito-kun!"
"Papa, bye bye! Make sure not to do anything reckless!"
'I guess I should rest up at home, those frogs took forever to clear out, I got enough Scavenger Toad Meat to feed a village for a year. Agil should be bringing those to the orphanage soon, I should get something for Asuna and Yui on my way back...'
As Kirito continued his journey through the world, a figure clad in black watched silently as Kirito entered and left stores for supplies. He used his palm to push up his glasses one more time before disappearing into the darkness of the shadows.
The week had passed and the boss meeting was held, Asuna had brought Yui along and told her to sit quietly while the grown ups were talking as the meeting was serious. Some of the players seemed nervous and on edge, wary of Kirito after what had happened.
"Based on what information we have, the boss is not visible at first. Our main reconnaissance team went in to investigate, only for the door to close behind them. When the door opened a few minutes later, the room was empty and there was no sign of them." Heathcliff summarized.
"An invisible boss?!" one of the players exclaimed.
"We don't know for sure, but it's possible, nearly anything is possible for this boss. It will be much harder than anything we've faced before, this will be the last of the quarter bosses before the final boss. Based on the scouts who were outside, they managed to catch a glimpse of the boss room before the door closed. From their description, there were large platforms around the main area, it is also significantly larger than any of the boss rooms on the previous floors." Heathcliff explained.
"I guess it's safe to assume that the platforms will be part of one of the boss' phases and that it is an anti-crystal zone, same as last floor, seeing as the scout team did not use their supplied crystals." Kirito hypothesized.
"Well of course you'd would know that! You're working with Kayaba! I bet you'll betray us later and just stab us in the back!" One of the more paranoid KOB members accused.
"I'm want to get out of this place as much as everyone else does! I just wanted to help us escape here faster by getting Zoro on our side, which I succeeded to some extent!"
"Yea, but you got revived by Kayaba! You gotta be hiding something, there's no way Kayaba would just specially revive you and no one else! You must have struck a deal with him beforehand, where you'd be the only one to go free if all of us died! You rotten Beater!" another player argued.
"Thats right! Even Zoro's help came with the condition of sacrificing ourselves!" a member of the DDA added.
"No one anything about sacrificing!" Asuna corrected.
"Besides, for all we know, that Zoro guy could instead come to kill us when five of us die, he could be a programme or something. After all, he knew Kayaba personally enough to get him to appear in the game after not showing himself for two years when he killed Kirito!" The KOB member theorized.
Yui decided to finally speak up and accessed her databanks to search up information on Zoro. Her face went blank as she summarised what data she had.
"My memory banks state that Zoro is indeed a player, however he entered the game just as the Beta was ending and remained since then. As I analyzed his emotional parameters during his time in the Hidden Dungeon, I found that he took it as a challenge to train himself to be stronger while advancing through the dungeon. He has interacted with Kayaba personally on multiple occasions, usually at the end of floors to negotiate ways to get stronger."
"That just proves that he's working with Kayaba!" a member of one of the smaller clearer guilds shouted.
Ignoring the interruption, Yui continued her report.
"However, the conversation they had near the end was the most enlightening, Kayaba gave Zoro a choice between leaving the game or saving those trapped along with him. Kayaba gave Zoro time to think and would come for the answer upon the defeat of the final boss."
"What was his answer then?" the clearer from earlier asked.
"Unfortunately, I do not possess much data on that as I left my post as the fight was ongoing. I do however, know that he was considering the option after Kayaba left, his emotions showed little conflict and leaned towards sympathy."
"Seeing as he didn't leave, it is safe to say he stayed to help, but was too powerful so Kayaba imposed restrictions on him to prevent us from clearing the game too quickly." Heathcliff inferred.
"Now I suggest that everyone focus on the task at hand so we don't end up losing enough people so that Zoro appears incase your theory is correct." the players looked down uncomfortable and continued with the meeting.
Many players were still suspicious of Kirito and Zoro, but set it aside to focus on the meeting and preparation. The rest of the meeting was quiet and somewhat awkward but the meeting time and place was decided, as well as formations.
The day for the battle came and some of the clearers backed off when Kirito arrived.
'It's only natural, I was revived by Kayaba, even if I didn't have anything to do with trapping them here, there will always be people like Kibaou who will accuse me of things like helping Kayaba for it'
"Oi, we have to trust each other if we are to work as a team, Kirito-kun would never help Kayaba, he's been fighting alone for so long to help us escape!"
"Asuna…"
The crowd relaxed a bit, but most were still wary. At exactly Twelve, Heathcliff arrived and briefed the clearers. One of the Knights opened up the portal and the clearers to enter. Before the boss door, Heathcliff gave a final speech to rally the troops and opened the door. Everyone charged in, only to notice that the room was empty. They scouted around the boss room and saw that the room had spikes at the bottom of the pit surrounding it. They tried to look into the pit to find the boss but found none.
'Thats strange, the boss usually is at the middle of the room, it was always obv-'
"UP THERE!"
Kirito turned to see one of the Fuurinkazan members pointing at the ceiling, everyone looked up to see the boss. It was a long segmented skeletal monster with two large bone scythes for hands. The moment the boss was noticed, Its health bars and name appeared and the fight started.
"The Skull Reaper"
It started jumped off the ceiling and brought its skeletal scythe down on one of the tanks. The tank readied its shield for the impact of the scythe, but it never came. The scythe went straight through the shield and sliced him. He was cleanly cut in two, pixelating into hexagons right before the eyes of his comrades.
"Kirito! You're with me, we need to distract those scythes, they seem to go through shields! The other scythe swung for me but my Shield-Sword was immune to the effect and protected me! The rest of you, attack its body!" Heathcliff shouted orders to the players.
They charged at it and attacked at the boss' weak spine with low cooldown swords skills while switching to heal and rest. Heathcliff and Kirito each blocked one of the scythes, Kirito at first tried to cut at it with one sword while parrying with the other, but it proved futile as his parry was broken by the slash. When using both Elucidator and Dark Repulsor, Kirito had managed to block the scythe well, so he switched to purely blocking and let the other clearers deal damage.
Ten minutes passed without incident, but a sudden scream was heard. From the front, Kirito caught a glimpse of someone pixelating into hexagons. Another of the clearers started running towards the boss.
"Yamada! Damn you, you stupid boss, why did you kill Yamada!"
The clearer started activating sword skills without any regard of the risks. He pounded away at the boss until one of the legs got him, it stabbed straight into his chest and he died. Some of the clearers started panicking and hesitated to attack.
"Everyone, focus, don't panic! We can mourn their losses later, we have to focus on the fight!" Asuna yelled from the side where she was attacking.
With renewed fervour, the remaining clears cleared their heads and continued attacking the boss. In a few moments, one of the boss' health bars got depleted and it changed its attack pattern, signalled by a scream. It jumped backwards and attached itself to the walls, leaving only some of its segments vulnerable. One of the clearers was attacking a leg by the side when it jumped and the leg rammed into him. The clearer was smashed against the wall and fell unconscious, falling into the pit of spikes below.
'That makes four, only one more.' Kayaba disguised as Heathcliff thought to himself as he watched the next phase initiate.
The players repositioned themselves to be able to safely attack the boss, while Kirito and Heathcliff continued to tank the two scythes that tried to cleave into their flesh. Now wary of the dangers, the clearers all played it safe and didn't risk anything. The second health bar was depleted without losses, save a few close calls, and The Skull Reaper returned to the centre of the room.
The third health bar was slowly and carefully being whittled down. Minutes passed as the boss' health went down little by little until it finally reached Zero and broke. Its fourth phase activated with a scream as The Skull Reaper suddenly shifted to a more defensive stance, it had rolled its segments up into a ball. It looked like a snail now, most of its weak spots were hidden, leaving only its tail segment exposed. Now that it had very little exposed, the clearers pulled back for a bit and strategized while Kirito and Heathcliff continued to switch with each other for healing.
The clearers with the highest attacks were chosen to attack the weak spot while the others looked to unconventional ways of attack. Those with the skill tried throwing some poison needles at any higher up exposed segments, while those with claws climbed it to attack, using one hand for attacking and the other to secure themselves.
The boss' health continued to go down at an extremely slow rate, with Kirito and Heathcliff distracting the scythes, the other clearers were relatively safe from harm. The boss' health bar reached zero and its next phase was initiated, the clearers backed off, not wanting to be killed off like the earlier player. The Skull Reaper latched onto the walls and started moving towards one of the platforms. As it was about to reach the platform, it detached half its body into the abyss and jumped to the platform.
"How are we supposed to hit it now?" Klein complained.
The boss' pulled back both its scythe arms as if readying to throw something. Kirito noticed the action and shouted for everyone to duck. The boss threw its scythe arms at the main platform and it barely cut the hair off of Klein's head. As some started lifting their heads, Kirito told them to stay down. The scythes started to boomerang back, nearly taking the heads of some players. with its scythe arms neatly attached, The Skull Reaper leaped back to the main part of the room and nearly crushed one of the DDA members.
The boss was now less vulnerable as it had discarded half of its weak points. The clearers used the same formations and Kirito with Heathcliff resumed distraction of the scythes.
'I'm down to just one Life Crystal, I didn't think the fight was going to be this hard.' Kirito thought as he used his second last one.
As the heath bar reached the 90% mark, The Skull Reaper retreated back to one of the surrounding platforms and once again readied its scythes. As the scythes flew, one of the players forgot to duck the second time and the scythe decapitated him. His head rolled onto the ground and his body went limp. The players stared in shock as the fifth clearer was slain, Zoro's criteria had been fulfilled.
'Come Zoro, show them your strength! I think your fight with Kirito has gotten him enough of a reality hit, I feel safe leaving it in his hands now.'
"System Command: Paralyze All ."
All the players were suddenly paralyzed, the boss also stopped moving. Heathcliff however was unaffected.
"What happened?!" a DDA member questioned in panic.
"I told you it was a penalty!" The KOB member from earlier shouted.
"Why is Heathcliff unaffected?" Klein asked.
"Because he's Kayaba," Kirito turned to Heathcliff, "aren't you?"
"Very good Kirito-kun, but how did you find out? I took care to not reveal anything too drastic."
"During our fight, you moved too fast, I figured there was something wrong then."
"Yes, you were too fast for me, I had to use System Assist to block your attack. Now if you excuse me, I have some work to do."
Chatter flared up among the clearers as they all panicked over the new revelation.
"System Command: Full Heal All ."
All the players in the room and the boss was fully healed. Kayaba then teleported all the players on the surrounding platforms and teleported Zoro in front of the boss.
"Now just wait on the platforms while Zoro deals with this."
"So it's finally time for my grand performance huh? Good, I was getting bored over there."
"System Command: Un-Paralyze All ."
The fight began anew as The Skull Reaper's five health bars were replenished. Everyone was eager to watch the fight as Zoro readied himself.
'It's not possible, he shouldn't be able to take down that boss himself no matter how much stronger he is than me! In our fight, from what I could tell, he had high health but his attacks weren't too powerful. I doubt they'll be able to severely damage the boss.' Kirito commented as he watched from the sidelines.
Drawing Shusui, Zoro got into stance as he prepared his attack.
'That's the stance he used when he was launching that attack at me, I think it was the 36 Pound Cannon or something… Wait! Its different somehow, he seems like he's putting more force into it!'
"Ittoryu: Sanbyakurokuju Pound Ho!" (One Sword Style: 360 Pound Cannon!)
The compressed air slice flew towards the boss. As it swirled towards its target, the attack didn't lose even an ounce of its strength. The hit connected with the boss, to the surprise of the clearers present, after the cloud of dust from the initial attack cleared, what could be seen, was the attack had gone straight through the boss and left a hole in the wall behind it, just barely missing one of the platforms. The boss was completely annihilated in one attack. Zoro sheathed his sword and as it clicked into the sheath, the boss broke into hexagons and the congratulations appeared.
'He never went all out on me at all! He was completely holding back!'
"Well, looks like my work here is done." Zoro announced as he started to walk out of the door and headed off into the dungeon mist.
"Kirito, you have proven yourself to be able to defeat me in the earlier duel. As without system assist, I would surely have lost. Thus I now entrust a special quest to you, you are to defeat Zoro! Asuna, you will take over the 'Knights of Blood', make sure to train before the next boss fight, Kirito will not be allowed into anymore boss battles until he has defeated Zoro. I bid you all farewell…"
In a flash of light, Kayaba was gone.
Kayaba appeared in front of Zoro as he was wandering around in the mist.
"Zoro, I know you wanted to look cool and all, but did you really have to go and get yourself lost for the sake of it?"
"Shut up, I'm not lost! The exit is just that way, watch!" Zoro pointed to his left and started running towards the right.
'Ugh why does such a powerful player have to have such a bad navigation sense.' Kayaba complained as he face-palm.
"System Command: Teleport Player to Home: Zoro ."
In a flash of light, Zoro was back to his arena home, with Kayaba next to him.
"I didn't need your help, but whatever, I'll go and train now, call me when the next fight is near."
A/N: Hello! I'm back from my trip to the land of gaming and now I bring you this chapter for the New Year! Hopefully it will be up to quality and be a good read. If you have any questions or suggestions I'll try to answer them if you contact me. Go review! I like reviews! I'll be working on my other story's next chapter now, so this will take awhile to be updated again.