A/N: I'm getting way too anxious about publishing more often. I've only got two pages of the next chapter done, I'll have to dedicate the entire fortnight to it in order to get it up.

As I told my guild the changes for our strategy, Fuscus' mouth opened, and the blue symbol on the forehead turned red. Without hesitation, I launched my boomerang up to strike the rune, and the symbol returned to blue as the face retracted slightly into the ceiling. I caught Convection and then pulled out my scimitar.

New Year's Eve, 2022 – Sometime after 14:30 AST. Around that more-exact time, we entered what seemed like an empty room at the top of the fifth-floor tower, only to find ourselves dodging giant rocky arms and legs which attacked only after one of us stepped on glowing blue lines on the floor.

Once we figured out that the lines provoked the attacks, my guild, the Aincrad Skyward Siege, then began triggering attacks on purpose, to attack the limbs as they passed. Now, we've prompted the boss to reveal its face in the ceiling, and we would continue to attack the limbs while stalling any attempt by the face to participate in the battle.

After the face's first move was cancelled, the lines began moving again. The tanks stayed still long enough for some lines to be triggered, and then led my DPS units into positions to attack the arms rising from the floor, and the legs stomping from the ceiling.

"I've got three things to watch now: your condition, the lines, and the face. Don't wait up for me to use many Sword Skills myself! I'll get in what I can!"

After an affirmation from Kirito, Asuna, and my guild, I continued to do exactly as I said I would. The first HP bar of six steadily drained out with each ambush by my players on the golem's limbs, as the face roared in anger. As the lines danced across the floor again, I hopped from gap to gap as I kept watch on the boss' forehead, my focus paying off as the rune glowed red again. After another use of Outer Curve carried Convection up, striking the symbol as was the rule with other golems, the rune turned blue, and my boomerang returned to my hand as the rest of the raid continued baiting all the limbs and wearing them down.

I watched the HP bars, and our pattern was consistent down to the end of the third, even halfway through the fourth.

"Hey, check out the walls!"

Heeding Kyubi's call-out, I looked around. Sure enough, the walls had formed into a pattern of thin, human-width vertical blue plates, which appeared to pulse back and forth in a wave-like motion.

"Alright, we're gonna have to move closer to the center of the room, near the stairs! There are less gaps between the lines there, so keep your eyes peeled!"

"You got it, boss!" answered each party's leader.

I sighed, still looking up at the ceiling. "You know what? I think that last bit made him think we were talking to him."

My eyes still focused on the uppermost surface of the room; it was flat like when we walked in.

I then shrugged. "Let's keep provoking the limbs, for now!"

"No need!"

Looking in the direction of Kiril's response, I saw what everyone else had realized on their way back toward the stairs: Fuscus' face was now there, open mouth where the stairs were.

"Oh, cool! You lot are way ahead of me!"

"Hey, I get it now!" Asuna called out while striking with Parallel Sting, "Its name, Vacant Colossus!"

"Yeah?" inquired Kirito, curiously.

"You know how 'vacant' means 'empty', and a colossus is a giant statue? It's empty on the inside, which is this chamber!"

I looked around at the pulsating wall plates, and laughed in admiration of the creative genius which had unfortunately been placed into the mind of a madman.

"And it can materialize essential parts inside of itself to purge the 'parasites' within! Yeah! Of course the golem made of magical ore would be capable of this! You'd be a great worldbuilder, Asuna!"

"Uhh, thanks? We can brainstorm game ideas later, when our lives aren't at risk!"

"Right!"

"While we're on the topic," Kirito called out as he pointed, "What about the golem's rune?"

I flinched upon looking at Fuscus' forehead. "You're right! It's gone!"

"It has to still be somewhere on him, though, as the Hebrew legend states!"

Kirito was right again, as the golem's mouth sat open without intervention, allowing it to roar hard enough for most of us to wobble a bit, as everyone was given a defense debuff.

I shook my head with another sigh. "Well, we know what it does when you don't hit the rune!"

As if reacting to my complaint, Fuscus removed his face from the floor, the stairs reforming in their original place as the golem's face re-emerged in the ceiling, mouth open in a diamond shape with a hollow, metallic, "Vwo, vwo, vwo," laughing like how I imagined the similar-looking SNES version of Andross from Star Fox would have, if I had played a single game in the series. The rune was back on the forehead, but it was blue again.

"Alright, when the face is on the floor, keep a few tanks aside to provoke the limbs! The rune should be somewhere on one of them!"

With everyone on the same page again, we continued with our original pattern, adapted for when Fuscus moved his face to the floor. Without getting to see any other effects from the roar, but still suffering from the original debuff, we brought down the fourth and fifth HP bars, bringing us closer and closer to victory as we got ready to start on the sixth bar at 3:15PM.

The face in the ceiling roared, and all the blue lines on the floor suddenly withdrew, slithering up along the walls before crackling around Fuscus' face like a mane.

"Alright, looks like we're changing how we fight, entirely!" I commented with a chuckle.

"You've said 'alright' like fifteen times in this battle alone!" Chumi whined.

"I'm trying to keep a cool head," I answered to her, "I never thought I'd ever lead a raid!"

"Well, you might get to do it again!"

"That's true. I'll try to keep it interesting!"

The arms and legs came down together, the players under them scattering as usual. And as the hands and feet touched down, knees and elbows formed, followed by the other half of each limb.

"Now it's looking more like the beta!" I laughed triumphantly, scimitar in hand.

Shoulders and hips connected the newly-jointed limbs to a blocky torso, as Fuscus' full body finally detached from the ceiling, crashing to the floor after we pulled back southward. The proper, whole golem roared, standing 30 feet or more in height, as the blue lines all over its body burned red.

"Perfect! Take traditional boss-confronting formation!"

As instructed, the tanks moved in to catch attacks and attention, while the DPS parties, along with myself, Kirito, and Asuna, fired off Sword Skills against the colossus. In this final form, Fuscus used punches, stomps, his debuffing roar, heat lasers from the eyes, and a frenzied double-fist whirlwind attack which was introduced shortly before the final bar went red.

Kirito leapt up as high as he could, striking Fuscus in the chest with Horizontal Square, cutting four lines in the golem's torso, then Asuna followed up with Diagonal Sting, a high-low double-stab.

"Damn, I thought you would get the LA this time, Asuna."

As I taunted the fencer, I kicked off of Kabe's shoulder, catching the knee of the colossus and pulling myself up, before leaping higher as I held my scimitar to my left in my right hand. Rising to the face, my arm pushed out of place to execute «Treble Scythe», a One-Handed Curved Sword skill made up of a three-hit clockwise spin attack.

The golem's ringed eyes blinked irregularly, and as I landed behind my two current most consistent companions, the red lines on its body flashed brightly as flame-like particles flared along them, and Fuscus the Vacant Colossus, the fifth-floor boss, exploded in a death animation more spectacular in visual effects than any previous boss, at about 15:45.

In the boss' absence, the texture of the floor changed to the regular dark-blue stone found on the inside of the labyrinth tower's other rooms. The floor rumbled, and we all looked up to see the exit stairs descending and then locking into place once the bottom step touched the floor.

"Least you didn't get another one, huh, Kirito?"

Asuna groaned frustratedly as the boy beside her seemed to barely stay on his feet.

"What did you even get?" she asked, retaining the tone in her previous groan.

I shrugged. "That wasn't why we raced up here."

Mild laughter surrounded us, coming from my guildmates. The fencer rolled her eyes with a sigh.

"Well, did we get what we came for?"

"We sure did!" answered Kaptyn, materializing a ten-foot-long spear with a white triangular banner attached below the point, and a slight bulge in the pole separating the two. The banner rested limp around the mirrored silver handle, and Kaptyn tossed it to me.

"Ah, here we are," I chuckled upon opening the property window, "This is the Flag of Valor, alright. These boss chambers are oftentimes 100 feet across, and the range is 50 feet in all directions. So, an entire raid can be affected if the bearer is able to keep themselves in the middle of the room."

As guild leader, I pressed the Register button at the bottom of the window, and as this permanent decision was made, the pure white banner changed to the colors of the Aincrad Skyward Siege, with our middle-finger silhouette emblem appearing in the space closest to the pole.

With the flag registered to my guild, there was no way to register it to another. That was the way I knew Kaptyn was loyal, as I always told my guild to read the properties of every item they ever got.

I put away the flag in my inventory, and took a deep breath.

"Right, just like we discussed on the way: we go to the sixth floor, open the first town, teleport back down to Karluin, help everyone move the New Year's party up. Roughly… seven hours to get all the preparations re-ready, I guess you'd say. Can we get it done in five?"

"Yeah!"

"Cool, let's get to it, then!"

It was but a straight-line walk, from the fifth-floor exit and then northwest, before we reached the walls around the main sixth-floor town, Stachion. I led them to the southern entrance, allowed the guild to spread out and do their own thing in town, and made my way to the plaza to open up the teleport gate, accompanied by Kirito and Asuna. Letting them stay there, I immediately went back down to Karluin, and told the ALS and DKB to take all of the festival props, catering, and everything else related to tonight's countdown, up to Stachion on the sixth floor. Obviously, they were mildly agitated that we ran ahead and cleared a tower on our own, but upon seeing the town, even with each building constructed out of eight-inch cubes of shiny gray stone akin to polished granite, they agreed that it would be more cheerful than the ruins and tents of Karluin. I called down my guild's entire roster, save for the elven auxiliary parties, to help move everything as planned. Sacrificing the time we would have spent getting our bearings on Stachion itself, we all managed to get everything ready and get everyone on the same page about the sudden change, at exactly 11:10PM. Now, we could relax and hang out for the next half hour or so.

Over the course of the year's final hour, more than a thousand players had gathered in Stachion.

"Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!" I hadn't really ever been at an actual countdown party like this, and so, I could only think of the crowd countdowns for WWE's Royal Rumble match, before every entrant entered the ring. That event should also be taking place a few weeks from now…

"Six! Five! Four! Three!" Everyone was perfectly in sync, unlike when pro wrestling crowds sing their heckling chants or the wrestlers' entrance themes. Usually, these countdown parties had some local MC on a microphone.

"Two, one!"

Flames burst from the teleport gate in the town plaza, shooting up to the underside of the next floor before exploding into a circle of flowers.

"Happy New Year!" cheered the players throughout town, as many directed Sword Skills at the walls for the colorful flashes accompanying each swing.

Kirito and Asuna chose only to hang with my guild – not because we were the better people to hang out with, but simply because they trusted us to stay quiet about their scarce opportunities to bond.

We had our own isolated setup further from the rest of the party, just close enough that my guild's members were still able to jog over to the main festival and see their other friends. I looked back to watch my more consistent companions drink the champagne sourced by the SSA, which from the mechanics of the game, was really just a sparkling wine.

"How are we enjoying our little exclusive spot?" I asked Kirito and Asuna with a chuckle.

"We're having fun like the rest of you," Asuna giggled, head gently swaying in placebo.

"I didn't realize there were fireworks in the game," Kirito commented, "Where do they sell them?"

"One of the other two guilds found this shady shop in the Town of Beginnings. They're only usable within towns, though; no monster-blasting exploit."

"Well, if Brandi keeps working on mixing things in Splash Bottles, we'll have something that's close enough anyway, won't we?"

I laughed as the fourth-floor arsonist waved from across the street. "You know it, Asuna."

We all looked up again to watch the final burst, many flames rocketing upward and plastering the bottom of the seventh floor with sparks of varying colors, echoing chains of boom throughout the series of explosions.

"Now that it's 2023," I began as Kirito and Asuna took a second to process that statement, "I have started looking for ways to execute some of the recreation ideas that my guild has wanted to offer. One example related to these fireworks, is that now we have a way to pull off pyrotechnics for any wrestling events if Kumiko or Brandi want to perform. Or, you know, that other thing we want to implement, where people who have the Martial Arts skill can do first-strike duels with just that one skill to use."

Kirito shook his head. "That's all well and good, but how can you so casually say it's 2023?"

"Right?" Asuna replied, looking up at the now-empty sky, "It's been two months. The first was just, you know, so slow for me. But once I started helping with the effort to climb up the castle, the days pass in a blink."

I chuckled once more, as I popped up to my feet. "Well, let's keep pushing higher, and we might not have to spend the entirety of this year in here. In the meantime, though – Speen, throw us another bottle, could ya?"

Speen took it a bit too literally, but I caught the champagne bottle by the neck.

"At least the cork will come out easily." After a chuckle, I handed the bottle to Kirito, and walked out into the grouping of parties already formed in my guild.

"Right, Kyubi. You take the new four fighters, and the new smith, to get them the Martial Arts quest. After they finish, get all the other crafters we've had for a couple weeks already, and do it for them."

"Makes sense to me," answered Kyubi.

"Excellent," I then turned to Chumi, "Now you, get the last relics in Karluin and put all revenue in the guild vault. I'll tell you what to do with it tomorrow, when I allocate funds to your party."

"You got it!" answered the leader of the party whose interactions with the DKB had been forgotten.

I then turned to Kaptyn. "Have a look all around Stachion for a better guildhouse. Given the rules of the town's construction, I doubt there will be anything available."

"Okay…?"

I chuckled and turned to Speen. "Trade party members with the other parties in the guild, until you have a party consisting of nothing but our guild's best sudoku players."

He blinked. "What?"

I continued to chuckle. "Every 9x9 grid in this town's blocks, is its own sudoku puzzle separated by thicker lines than the usual lines between blocks. Each of the 728 puzzles, has one darker tile out of the 81. When you finish each puzzle, log the number on the darker tile."

The scythe-wielder stared blankly. "Uh… I'll try to have them done, SAUER. Sure."

I nodded with a smile. "Now, Kabe. Go to the fourth floor and fight Magnatherium multiple times. Everything it drops, put it in the guild inventory, so that Brandi can make Combustion Flasks. I want every member of my guild to have a ranged option of some kind, even if it's literally just a Molotov analogue of some kind."

"We can do that, sure!"

"Now, Kiril," I called to her at the back of the group, "This floor's cut into five equal pieces. Look all around this northeastern section and confirm the locations of everything important."

"Got it, boss!"

The two elven auxiliary parties approached me, having been saved for last.

"Brandi, your forest party is caught up. Go to the star-shaped lake in the middle of the floor, and try finding a safe and reliable way to use it to skip the mountains that separate each section. The floor's tower is in the east section just south of this one."

"Works for me!" the arsonist cheerily answered.

"And Kumiko, you have the fifth-floor Dark Elf quests to do. You should be done with them before anyone finds the instances for either side on this floor, so when you do finish, help Brandi find us a shortcut to the eastern section."

"Alrighty, boss!"

While everyone else had the right to start their tasks anytime, it was agreed between Kirito, Asuna, and myself, that we would get onto our interests at 10AM. That said, we had to choose where we'd stay for the morning. Or at least, I would see them to their choice, and I would go back to the guild headquarters in Karluin. This was made clear to them prior, and I would meet the two of them in a restaurant attached to the inn we'd chosen.

"At eight… or, no, nine o'clock?" asked Asuna, for confirmation.

"That's fine with me," answered Kirito, as I nodded before my answer, "Works for me, too."

"Then good night, you two." Asuna then grabbed the door handle, only for it to rattle in place.

I chortled. "Take a closer look at the room's number plate."

She blinked as she examined the plate, which was split into a 4x4 grid made up of 15 tiles and an empty space, each tile numbered 0-14.

"Oh, it's a 15-puzzle."

I nodded with a smile. "In the west, we just call them slide puzzles. Since you've got Room 201, you have the easiest one."

"Oh?"

Kirito nodded. "Yeah, Room 202 has a second 2, instead of a 14."

Asuna stepped over for a second to look, and then returned to her door. "Hm. Okay."

"As for how we'll start the day, after breakfast," I explained as she opened the door, "We'll try again with PvP practice, since we couldn't get to it on the fifth floor. It has to be done."

The fencer took a deep breath. "Alright. We'll have a little longer to get our bearings beforehand."

I understood that they were younger than me, which was why I agreed to 9AM. But as I had made it back to the SSA fort at 12:30, and fallen asleep almost immediately, I was up at 8:30. Seeing that my guild's primary parties were already getting breakfast from the wrestlers, soon ready to head out, I figured that I would go up to the sixth floor and just wait for Kirito and Asuna there. It was a casual walk to the teleport gate, and then to the inn where they stayed.

At just about 8:58, however, when I opened the door, I heard a thwack! sound from the other side. I stepped in and closed the door, only to see Kirito and Asuna in a pile, as they stood up slowly and rubbed their heads.

"You know, you use the sleep energy in your arms and jaw, to move utensils and eat."

I saw them blink in response to my shower thought-style advice, as I smugly turned to walk to the restaurant where we were meeting, opposite the stairs to the inn's rooms. The breakfast platter was two buttered rolls, green salad, cheese, ham, and eggs; we ordered the platters with coffee.

"Huh. You don't have to solve a puzzle to get your food."

Kirito chuckled at Asuna's comment. "Would you prefer that? For lunch, I know a place that sells a meal served in a puzzle box…"

"No, thank you."

After we ate, I leaned back with a sigh. "Suppose you want some more context on the floor?"

Asuna tilted her head. "Huh? Oh, yeah – is there something special about Stachion?"

I shrugged. "I mean, technically? But, the puzzles are a theme throughout the floor."

"Yeah, it was hated in the beta."

Asuna nodded slowly. "I can imagine, a lot of things were hated in the beta, which people would probably rather have back, instead of what we have now."

I couldn't help but chuckle. "Isn't that the truth – the boss is a walking Rubik's Cube. The line which you attack gets rotated, and its armor breaks when the cube is solved. Of course, everyone simply hammered on it without any thought."

Asuna stabbed a cucumber-like vegetable with her fork. "If we want to make sure it gets done right the first time, the Aincrad Skyward Siege has to get in there with the Flag of Valor."

I hesitated on a sip of coffee. "With you two, and the flag, we can beat out any changes made."

"What are the bonuses from the flag, again?" asked the fencer.

"Increased attack power, defense power, debuff resistance, and shorter cooldowns. Also, I told my smiths to close up just for today, and get polearm-based upgrade materials. The flag's maximum attempt count is ten, and the upgrades affect the flag bonuses."

At 9:20, we finished up and left the inn's restaurant. I opened my messaging interface, and looked at Kirito's back-worn blade, the Sword of Eventide.

"I think you should be upgrading that sword by now, don't you think?"

The boy turned to me. "Huh? Yeah, I figured we'd do it near where we'll practice duels."

I nodded. "Fair enough, getting both done in a small interval. A wise choice – my weapon smiths are already back at the HQ, because my armor smith, Patcher, was just murdered."

"What?!"

In response to Asuna's reaction, I showed them my interface. Fishtank, the smith whom I planned to task with upgrading the flag, described hearing a shattering sound, turning around, and seeing what the three of us had hoped to see first, before anyone else:

"The man in the poncho?"

I nodded as Kirito read the message. "They saw him with an orange cursor, and he escaped with the use of a smoke bomb. The other smith, Jambit, heard some kind of catchphrase before the shatter."

Kirito tilted his head. "Catchphrase?"

I closed the window after reading it. "It's showtime."

Asuna shook her head. "I'm sorry that you lost Patcher."

I took a deep breath. "Thanks. Had him even in the beta. He leaves us with the gift of knowledge, however; the poncho man is now orange, which means we'll immediately know when he's inside a safe zone because of the NPC guards. On top of that, we know smoke bombs exist in the game. I'll relay that to Brandi."

Passing by Speen's party, as they were already hard at work on the sudoku puzzles, we teleported all the way down to Zumfut on the third floor, and headed out southwest, into the Forest of Wavering Mists where we found the first elven instance we had entered – the Dark Elf camp.

"Excellent choice, Kirito," I chuckled as we headed toward the shop tents, "Turns out that this smith actually remains the best, so far; the fourth floor's smith is barely adjusted to working with most weapons after the softening made to Yofel Castle before, and the fifth floor's elf fortress is just way too far from Karluin."

This ramble reminded me to message Kumiko, telling her that the Dark Elf instance on the 6th floor was in the barren northwest section, which was next in the designed counterclockwise path. Thus, I directed her to return to the HQ after she'd finished the fifth-floor quests, and talk to Kiril once her party came back from floor-scouting. At any rate, around this time, Kumiko would be securing the Amber Key, with it and the Jade & Lapis keys being taken to the sixth floor afterward.

"I guess that's as good a reason to come here as any other," Kirito replied as we passed elves whose attitudes toward us were more clearly positive than when we were last here.

I couldn't help but smile as each dark elf asked how we were. "We're good, just busy," I replied to every second or third we passed, varying my phrasing as best I could after the first.

I supposed that if the elven factions had affinity values, there were benefits beyond just the quest rewards themselves. Of course, it probably also meant that the opposing faction fought harder.

Maybe, with enough affinity in a faction, it would be possible to gain temporary allies in a party, outside of the elven questline. I never thought to consider it in the beta, after beating the Elf War campaign in the beta, before proceeding up to the tenth floor where we concluded the beta test.

If such an option existed, it would greatly reduce the clearing workload, if only for the fact that the affinity would likely fall if elven allies died in our company; we would have to ensure that players never became complacent, and continued to fight with the elves' support.

If that wasn't an option, then what about the more consistent allies one can make with the initial encounter if their death is prevented? If the ability to do it wasn't considered, then was it possible, long after the ninth floor, that these friends would just be left behind at a base, only being there for brief interactions when we'd choose to visit?

I didn't want to consider that. I didn't want Kizmel to start feeling like a regular NPC all over again, merely repeating a couple lines of dialogue for the next year or two.

At the same time, though… If Kizmel's autonomy was improvised by the system, then maybe, just maybe, it would realize that she would need something to do once the ninth floor's quests were complete for our party. Then, potentially, it could ensure that she still felt real, at the very least.

I just wondered if there was anything I could do to guide the system, or if I would have to sacrifice valuable floor-clearing time to pull it off.

I couldn't let her appeal destroy my reason. But I couldn't let my reason destroy her.

A/N: I will get Chapter 22 done by the time it goes up next fortnight. I do have a couple other things being worked on, but I will put them on hold until it's done.

As for the results of the pilot for In Defense of Beaters... Well, I didn't get accurate statistics. Though the views on FFN were much higher than they would have been on Ao3 under normal circumstances, I feel like I should give the spinoff another chance, on account of the stats I may have missed during the DDoS attack on Ao3 very shortly after the initial pilot went up. So, I'm almost done with a second pilot, and that'll go up next week on both sites. I'll also have to rethink how I'll determine the project's fate, based on how the stats will be split by chapter.

If any of you want to lend a hand to me or any other SAO fanfiction authors on either site, you can reach us via the SAO fanfiction Discord server by this key: Sycypugbxq