November 15th, 2024 (Hollow Area Day 44)

The two-handed axe would've taken Klein's head clean off, if he hadn't ducked at the last instant. As it was, the haft managed to catch him in the ribs, forcing a grunt out of him. He didn't let it faze him, though, and pushed himself to thrust a Hirazuki through the Hollow's spine before it could finish the Whirlwind's second strike.

That Hollow fell like a puppet with its strings cut, allowing Klein to advance another couple of meters. Sheer instinct warned him of an incoming Throwing Spike; he deflected the poisoned projectile with the Suzaku Blade and kept right on going. Before Hollow Morte could try it again, he was in range, slashing upward with an Ukifune to fling the copy-PKer into the air and out of the way.

A dagger slipped in from the left, stabbing him in the ribs; he hissed, seeing the slim but sharp blade crit for a good five percent of his HP. It wasn't poisoned, though, and before its wielder could capitalize on the distraction, Dale's enormous sword split the Hollow clean in half. Snarling wordlessly, the big tank charged further into the fray, using his raw STR in place of Sword Skills to cut a path.

Good thing most of these guys are based on people who never got close to the current frontline, Klein thought grimly. Taking two more steps down the incompletely-textured tunnel floor, he followed Dale's example, using STR and muscle memory to slice a spear-wielding Hollow's arms off. But dammit, why are there so many of them? Philia said she only ever saw around fifty at a time!

It was hard to tell in the middle of the melee, but he was pretty damn sure there were at least thirty between his raid and their destination. And that number didn't seem to be going down much, even as Sachi appeared from under her cloak to behead a Hollow whose scimitar was centimeters from Lux's kidney. Even when Godfree bellowed at the sword that bit into his shoulder and used his axe to gut the offender, it seemed like the Hollows weren't thinning. The raid gained ground, yet there was always another Hollow or three to replace every one struck down.

On the bright side, if we're facing this many here, Team Kirito should be doing better on their end. …I hope.

With the Baneblade's remains reforged into a new sword, the decision had been made to go for broke and attack. There was no telling when PoH would be ready to enter the Sanctuary, and the time dilation weirdness was making everyone twitchy. The Hollow Area was not normal, they had no way of knowing when something worse would happen, and word had come through from Asuna that clearing had gotten bogged down on the Seventy-Sixth Floor.

It was time to end it.

Team Kirito was going after the Sanctuary, on the assumption that PoH would be heading there, if he wasn't already. Backed up by Rain's personal KoB team, the best duelists hoped to finish the job. In the meantime, Fuurinkazan had been dispatched with the second KoB party to secure the Foundry, hopefully cutting off the supply of Hollows. That it would give Griselda a chance to confront her husband was a side benefit.

Personally, Klein was iffy about Godfree, and didn't trust Kuradeel as far as he could throw him. Which was exactly why he hadn't quibbled, not wanting his buddy Kirito to have people like that at his back.

Gotta admit, though, he spared a moment to think, in between slashing a Hollow XaXa's arm off and delivering the coup de grace to the Hollow Morte when he fell back down, Kuradeel's better at this than I'd heard. Guess he learned something from his own boss stomping him flat.

A quick glance toward the KoB side of the fight showed him Kuradeel flinging two Hollow PKers away with a single Cyclone. Another one conked him on the head with a staff, but that only produced a curse that made Klein flinch and a Back Rush that took the offender's right arm and head off.

His armor's not the best, Klein judged, from the gash a saber had left in it earlier and the Knight's remaining HP. And he probably can't fight worth a damn without skills. But he'll do.

He hoped so. A small army of Hollows had turned out to be waiting in the underground path to the Foundry, instead of just the scattered patrols Philia had laid out in the briefing. Either PoH still had some sources in the clearer group, or he'd decided it was D-Day, too. Either way, what the raiders had hoped would be a quiet infiltration had turned quickly into a pitched battle.

Nowhere to run, in the Hollow Area's tunnel network. No quick escape, with Teleport Crystals nonfunctional. They were committed.

Still, meter by meter, they gained ground. There were enough raiders, and the tunnels just narrow enough a bottleneck, for something resembling potion rotation to be possible. None of the Hollows were nearly at the levels of clearers fresh from the Seventy-Sixth Floor.

Dynamm and Issin fell back a few paces, hurriedly drinking potions. Lux slipped into the gap, her one-handed sword biting deep into the chest of the zweihander-wielding Hollow who'd done the worst of the damage. Griselda came up next to her, shouting at it; while it was distracted trying to figure out what she was, a KoB macer bashed its head in.

Guess we've all fought enough of these to not care that they look like people anymore, Klein thought distantly, burying his katana in another Hollow's heart. Not sure that's a good thing…. But we're almost there. The door leading to the stairway into the Foundry was about ten meters ahead. He thought he'd need to drop back to heal himself before they got there, but if they kept this up—

A roar shook the tunnel. The stone door exploded off its hinges, violating every rule of Immortal Objects that held in normal Aincrad. A shape that should not have fit in the stairway burst out, swept a huge sword, and flung five Hollows into the walls hard enough to make them explode.

Breath of ball lightning was spat down the hall, forcing the raiders to duck and scatter; poor Godfree took it head-on and was blasted way back down the tunnel.

Oh, hell, no, Klein thought, staring in mild horror at the mini-Gleam Eyes. This is just not fair!

Lux narrowly dodged the tumbling, screaming Godfree, and tried not to panic. Up to that moment, she'd honestly found the battle to reach the Foundry oddly cathartic—she knew the enemies weren't real people, and they were relatively low-level. That had let her have the satisfaction of vicariously cutting down her tormentors without any guilt at all.

Remembering the months Laughing Coffin had used her to help with their killing spree, in her darker moments she wasn't sure she would've batted an eye at the chance to kill the real ones. The opportunity to work out those disturbing impulses safely had been a relief.

Coming face-to-fang with the Gleam Eyes all over again was not cathartic. At all. Their mini-raid wasn't even close to being up to fighting a Floor Boss, and while it seemed to be distracted tearing into the Hollows in its way, she knew it was only a matter of seconds before it came after the raid. After her.

She heard Kuradeel snarl a curse that under other circumstances would've made her ears burn. She barely noticed him catching Godfree in one hand and awkwardly slashing at a copy-Morte; as a roaring rose in her ears, she only faintly heard him shout something about a retreat.

Anti-Crystal trap, Lux thought, flashing back to the fiery chamber in which she'd last scene the demonic boss. We can't retreat. Ahead of her, the rest of Fuurinkazan was bunching up, clearing away a pocket of Hollows—and the Gleam Eyes was opening its mouth again, preparing for another blast of ball lightning. PKers and monsters and no crystals…. It's happening again, just like it always does—

"Hey! Over here, furball!"

Griselda stepped boldly in front of the Gleam Eyes, shouting defiance. For a second, the boss froze in place, unnaturally still. Then, as if unpaused, it launched its breath attack—which passed right through the ghostly guildmaster, smashing three Hollows to polygons before impacting harmlessly on the tunnel wall.

That's right, Lux realized, head beginning to clear. The original Gleam Eyes didn't know how to handle a ghost. And… we won that fight, with only a few more people than we have now, and fewer of them proper clearers.

Snapped back to thinking, she finally noticed this "Gleam Eyes" was less than half the size of the original, too. And though Godfree had lost about a third of his HP to a direct hit from its breath attack, that was nothing compared to the one they'd fought on the Seventy-Fourth Floor.

"Everybody stop panicking and listen up!" Klein shouted over the din. "KoB, keep the damn Hollows off us. Fuurinkazan, we're bringing down the boss! Let's go!"

A flicker of a cloak being thrown back, and Sachi was suddenly by Lux's side, touching her shoulder with her shield-hand. "You ready for this, Lux?"

"Yeah," the green-haired swordswoman replied, with a confidence that surprised herself. Mustering up a grin that wasn't completely fake, she brought her sword up behind her shoulder. "Let's do it!"

Sachi grinned back, and disappeared back under her cloak. At the same time, Lux's sword glowed, and she gave herself to the Sonic Leap. A split second after takeoff, her knee smacked into a Hollow lancer's nose, but the system assist and her own STR rating kept her going. Her leap ended with her sword buried in a Hollow Johnny Black's back, killing the copy before he could make a sound.

Controlled chaos followed, as Lux let the instinct honed by her last unplanned boss fight guide her. She dodged under the mini-Gleam Eyes' claws, slashing at its left leg. She took a bite from its snake-head tail, knocking her off-balance and poisoning her. While she dodged back to drink an antidote, Harry One slammed the tail aside with his warhammer. When it swung its zweihander around at him, Dale brought his own heavy blade down across its spine.

More Hollows were still pouring in through the now-open doorway, adding more chaos. Somewhere around then, Klein used a strange skill Lux had never seen before, leaping high into the air, twisting to plant his feet on the tunnel ceiling. Pushing off, he smashed into the boss' back with the full force of system assist, his STR, and sheer gravity, sending the mini-Gleam Eyes sprawling forward.

Forward, and away from the door into the Foundry.

The KoB party was suddenly taking point, wading into the Hollows, while Fuurinkazan herded the boss to a more open section farther back. Godfree, face white as a sheet, led the charge, his two-handed axe whirling into a Hollow axeman's chest. A rapier dripping with yellow poison stabbed him in the back a moment later, paralyzing him; with another snarled curse, Kuradeel brought an Avalanche down on the offending Hollow's head, splitting him in half. A third member of the party, a man with a scimitar whose name Lux had never quite caught, used an Antidote Crystal on Godfree, and the fight continued.

Not an Anti-Crystal trap, Lux realized, last vestiges of her panic vanishing. Teleport Crystals don't work, but the others do… we can win this. We will win this.

She was still scared. There were still a lot of ways the fight could go wrong. But she was no longer terrified, and that made all the difference.

The KoB party's main tank, a big man with a cruciform sword and tower shield that had to have been chosen to imitate the guild's old boss, planted himself right in front of the doorway. Shouting a Howl taunt, he drew aggro to himself and hunkered down behind his shield. He wasn't quite blocking the doorway—that would've drawn all Hollow aggro to himself, a very bad idea—but he acted as a funnel, making the flow of newly-arriving enemies manageable, and predictable.

Which left Fuurinkazan mostly free to focus on the mini-Gleam Eyes. Eight players against a mini-boss. One of them only a "clearer" because she'd survived getting thrown into a Floor Boss fight she'd never meant to be part of.

Lux hurled herself into the fight with enthusiasm.

Dynamm was flung back at one point, hit by a bad combination of the tail's poison bite and a composite Sword Skill involving a brutal Vertical from the boss' zweihander and a wicked kick from one hoofed foot. Compounded by impact damage from hitting the stone wall, he ended up in a nasty Tumble with over a quarter of his HP gone and the poison drawing it down farther. The post-motion delay for the demon gave Kunimittz and Issin time to stab it with spear and sasumata, striking from both sides to hold it in place another second.

Lux took that chance to ram a Vorpal Strike into its stomach. At the same time, Sachi appeared behind it, carving the seven diagonal slashes of a Shadow Explosion into its back. It roared in rage, and spun into a one-handed version of a Whirlwind, flinging all four players away.

Lux hit the tunnel floor and rolled, seeing stars. When she stopped, her vision was still swimming, her inner ear convinced she was still in motion. What she could see made her blood run cold: a Hollow of XaXa, who'd somehow ended up well behind—or maybe had come from that way, for all she knew—standing over her, readying his estoc to stab her.

Knowing XaXa as she did, even a copy would go for the throat. A critical like that, and it would be all over—

A streak of light hit Hollow XaXa in the throat instead, and he froze in place. That gave Lux just the opening she needed. Slashing quickly with her sword while still prone, she knocked his legs out from under him, and as he fell, she desperately rolled to her feet.

A quick stab, and it was over. Having gained a bit of breathing space, she looked over her shoulder, just in time to see Kuradeel, a strange look on his face, turning back to smash another Hollow into the wall.

…Did Kuradeel throw a poisoned dart…?

No time to think about it. He'd saved her life, and just then that was what mattered. Howling a battle cry, Lux threw herself into a Sonic Leap, hurtling back into the fight with the mini-Gleam Eyes.

It was, to her surprise, very nearly dead. Its attacks were frighteningly similar to the original's, but its HP wasn't even close. All of Fuurinkazan took a beating, yet it couldn't have been more than another five minutes before Klein flipped the Suzaku Blade in his hands, sheathed it, and steadied himself. It roared, seeming to see what he was doing, only to be distracted by Griselda screaming at it again.

Before it could remember which opponent had a hitbox, the Suzaku Blade flashed out in a blaze of crimson light. Looking like a katana version of a Vorpal Strike, that light cut clean through the demon's neck, and its head flew free. It slammed into the back of a Hollow PKer's head, before bouncing to the stone floor and shattering.

A second later, the body followed suit. Released from the post-motion of his skill, Klein straightened, a grim smile on his face. "Learned that trick from Kirito's story about Kuze. …C'mon, guys, let's help the KoB clear out the Hollows and get moving. We need to move."

"More trouble, Boss?" Dale asked, looking more resigned than surprised.

"If we've got this many Hollows here, then Team Kirito's probably dealing with the golems," Klein told him grimly, already moving to join the KoB party's fight. "And Grimlock just threw a mini-boss at us. We need to stop that psycho before he figures out how to hit us with something worse."

Yep. This place is just as creepy as Philia said it was. If this was Kayaba's own personal in-game workshop, that guy's got even more screws loose than I thought. Where he did get these ideas, from a Creepypasta website?

Fourteen Swordmasters made a lot of noise, when they were in a hurry and not trying to sneak around. The KoB party alone was one big mass of clanking armor. Klein could still plainly hear the clicking of the thousands of gears that lined the Foundry's walls. If he'd been skulking around like Philia had, he was pretty sure he'd have gone mad from the sound alone.

"No Hollows up here," Godfree said, relief plain in his voice, as the raid filed out of the stairway room and into the large hallway beyond. "Maybe we finally made them run out."

"Don't be too sure," Kuradeel, of all people, cautioned. His face had an unpleasant grimace, as usual, though this time Klein suspected it might just have been directed toward the bad guys. "The treasure hunter said the boxes held the NPCs LC was using to make them… and an awful lot of those boxes are empty now."

Ouch. Bad sign when Kuradeel was making sense, from everything Klein had heard of the man. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, he told himself, leading the raid past an unnerving number of open doors showing more empty boxes. You need all the smart backup you can get right now. Be glad he's not doing anything stupid like challenging friendlies to duels.

He was still relieved when Sachi cleared her throat. "Godfree-san may be right, though. We went through a lot of Hollows getting here, and there must be a limit to how many NPCs made it down here in the first place. Sooner or later, Grimlock has to run out."

"…I wish it was that easy," Griselda said softly, ghosting along to Klein's left. Her face grew tighter by the moment, as they reached the end of the hall and started up the next set of stairs, and her voice was so flat he couldn't begin to guess what she was thinking or feeling in that moment. "But Grimlock was never a frontline fighter, when we ran Golden Apple together. He was our blacksmith, and if he wasn't a strategist, he knew how to manage resources."

"Which means we may be walking into a trap," Dynamm finished, shaking his head. "Great. Y'know, when we're finished in this crazy place, I say we take a vacation. Things have been crazy ever since the Skull Reaper."

"I hear Commander Asuna is already planning a Christmas bash," Klein told him. "Kinda like last year's, except now she's got her own castle to play around with. Keep it together until then, 'kay?"

He was glad to hear the speculation that provoked, a more cheerful chatter starting up between the Fuurinkazan and KoB raiders. As they wound their way through the Foundry's disturbing, clicking halls, he wanted the mood as light as possible. If he was right, they were just about to run into the biggest horror of them all.

At least they didn't have to search blindly. Philia's maps led them right to the center of the Foundry, and while she'd never found the way down to the factory floor from the upper catwalk, it wasn't too hard to spot when they weren't trying to hide. After following the chains partway into the huge room, Lux spotted a ladder on one side of the catwalk.

It was the most nerve-wracking part of the expedition. Having to go down a narrow ladder, one by one, knowing that their target had figured out how to spawn mini-bosses, had Klein's hair so much on end that SAO's emotional expression system made it look like he'd stuck his finger in a light socket. That none of his guys laughed said a lot about how tense everybody was. No more thoughts about Christmas.

Not when they saw the conveyors, forges, and less recognizable stuff that littered the room. And still nothing had come to attack them.

Philia said Grimlock's little horror chamber was at the far west end. …Damn, can't see it from here. She didn't mention this part.

Smoke obscured the west end of the room. A curtain of green smoke, which just made Klein even more wired. Taking a quick inventory of his belt pouch to make sure he had antidotes ready—just in case that green meant poison—he drew the Suzaku Blade and resolutely led the way across the factory floor.

No debuffs when he walked into the smoke. Though he did hear several people coughing, and Sachi spat a word he was pretty sure she'd learned from Kizmel. Thankfully, it really was more a curtain than anything else, and after just a couple of steps he was through.

Through, and seeing what Philia had reported: the first ordinary computer interface Klein had seen in two years, standing next to a pit with a platform suspended by chains, covered in a white sheet. A couple meters behind the weird, horror-movie setup was a long row of pallets, more sheets covering human shapes—inactive Hollows or their "raw materials", Klein didn't know and didn't want to.

Standing beside the console, looking way too calm for a man staring down fourteen angry clearers, was a tall man in a neat black suit and hat. "Well, hello there," the man said casually, resting one hand on the computer interface. "PoH did say I'd have guests coming soon. Now I see why he was so sure you'd get through my Hollows."

"…Grimlock," Griselda hissed, through gritted teeth. Stepping forward, her hands clenched, and several expressions chased across her face too fast for Klein to read. "Grimlock, what are you doing? Why are you doing this?"

"I do admit," Grimlock said, seeming to ignore his wife's ghost entirely, "I thought throwing a Floor Boss at you might do the trick. Unfortunately, it seems the level-scaling of the Foundry's creations apply to bosses, too. Pity. Though with a bit more practice, I might manage something better… ah, but that no longer matters."

"What are you doing, you sick freak?" Klein growled, leveling the Suzaku Blade; he was warmed to hear a dozen or so other weapons rattle behind him. Sounded like even Godfree's people knew an evil bastard when they saw one. "You do know there's fourteen of us and one of you, right? And that some of us might not mind going orange just now?"

Grimlock clicked his tongue. "Petty threats. I have the situation under control, I assure you. I'd advise you to leave while you can, honestly. PoH is already gone, anyway, with what should be perfect copies of the Keys, so you may want to go after him. I'll even let you, with no strings attached. After all, I do owe you a debt, for helping me complete my work."

Alarms began ringing in Klein's head, and not just at the news that they really were too late to catch the mastermind. "What the hell are you—?"

"I've been wondering what the missing piece was for over a month now," the blacksmith went on, cool as could be. "Now I know. And while I may not know what you are—" he finally looked at Griselda, a disturbing gleam in his eye "—it seems the system recognizes you. And what it recognizes, it can work with."

Griselda took another step forward, reaching out to her husband. "Grimlock, what are you doing? Answer me! What is all this?!"

"The beginning of the end, you twisted fake." Grimlock's mouth twisted. "I've waited long enough to bring back my wife. I'm not letting you stand in my way any longer!"

Too late, Klein realized the blacksmith's hand wasn't by the keyboard just to lean. His fingers were already poised, and before the samurai could try to lop the man's arm off, keys clicked.

Without a sound, Griselda flickered, and vanished. An instant later, chains rattled into motion, and the platform began to sink down into the pit. Sickly green light blazed from below, swallowing the platform and the all-too-human shape resting on it.

Gone. Just like that. Months she's been hanging around, trying to stop what her bastard of a husband set off, and just like that, she's….

Klein saw red. "You son of a bitch!" he screamed, slamming the Suzaku Blade back into its scabbard. "I'll kill you—!" Before he could unleash the Shin Zekkuu and cut the murderous bastard in half, he was grabbed from behind, holding his arms in place. "Let me go, dammit! You saw what he just did, let me go!"

"Not like this, Klein!" Sachi yelled in his ear, game mechanics letting her slight frame hold back his left arm. "Not like this! Don't you get it?!"

"Get a hold of yourself, Boss!" Dale snapped from the other side, his bulk preventing Klein from drawing his sword even a centimeter. "This is a trap, dammit!"

"Very astute," Grimlock observed, from somewhere beyond the veil of red rage. "As I said, I have the situation under control. I saved the best for last, just in case you really did get this far. I did offer some of them to PoH, but he prefers the personal touch. I supposed I'm not one to talk, anyway. …Kill them."

White sheets went flying away from pallets, and two dozen humanoid figures leapt toward the raid. Half of them, Klein saw, surprise clearing his vision, were copies of bosses—he recognized from stories he'd heard two mini-Illfangs, the metallic laughter of Vemacitrin, and more he only vaguely knew at all.

Leaping for Sachi were a pair of Hollows of Johnny Black, fueling Klein's fury again. He'd never forget who it was that tricked the Moonlit Blacks to their deaths, and from the horrified rage on her face, neither would Sachi.

Before he could move to help her, one more landed right in front of him—a spiky-haired man with sunglasses, a twisted grin, and a copy of Klein's own Suzaku Blade. "Well, well!" Kuze said with a laugh. "That's my sword you've got there, buddy. How 'bout we see who's the better samurai?"

Chaos erupted, Sword Skills already flying as Hollows and mini-bosses tangled with Fuurinkazan and Knights of the Blood. Grimlock watched it begin with a calm, cruel smile, before turning his attention to the computer monitor. And Klein….

Not a chance in hell, bastard. Rage chilling to a cold, sharp fury, Klein finally lashed out with the Shin Zekkuu, a crimson crescent moon flashing out toward Kuze's face. "Go to hell!"

The raid had started rough, but under control. Even with so many Hollows and a nerfed Gleam Eyes, the raid on the Foundry had gone closer to plan than Sachi thought they'd any right to expect. Then, with just the tapping of a couple of computer keys, everything had gone wrong.

Griselda was gone. Hollows stronger than any they'd encountered before were swarming them. Multiple copies of some of the most infamous bosses were attacking. And just to top it all off, she was being attacked, personally, by two clones of the man who'd nearly destroyed her life even more completely than Kayaba had.

Sachi stabbed her sword into the factory floor, sending out the shockwave of a Serration Wave to throw her attackers off-balance. Just another boss raid. When does anything ever go right in one of these?

Godfree was falling back in a hurry, practically gibbering in terror at the sight of the six-armed automaton. The rest of his party didn't seem quite as bad off, their main tank already interposing his shield between its weapons and his fellows. Dynamm and Issin caught one Illfang mid-leap, sword and sasumata sending it tumbling to face-plant on the floor. Dale met the other head-on, his heavy blade catching its nodachi in a deafening clang. Kunimittz and Harry One sidestepped Hollow XaXa's Linear, and bore down on a laughing Morte.

Lux dueled with a werewolf boss Sachi didn't recognize, face taut but determined. She'd come a long way from the terrified LC pawn Fuurinkazan had first met—surviving the impromptu Gleam Eyes raid had done wonders for the green-haired girl's self-confidence.

Kuze had dodged Klein's opening Shin Zekkuu, barely, and the katana-wielders were exchanging a rapid series of skills only comprehensible by those who'd mastered that weapon. In the brief glimpses Sachi had, all she could tell was that Kuze was every bit as dangerous as Kirito and Kizmel had told her. But so is Klein. I know he can do it!

Sachi was left alone to face Johnny Black and Johnny Black. And in that moment, watching them stagger back from her first strike, she felt her lips curl in a savage smile. I've been waiting for this a long time. You're not going to stop me! Not again! Never again!

She swept her cloak over herself, and vanished. In the melee of fourteen Swordmasters and more mobs than she'd had time to count, there wasn't much room to sneak around, but it was enough to throw them off for another critical second. She dashed right between the two Hollow knifemen, spun, and slashed a Slant down into the left one's calf.

The post-motion from the basic skill was short, and while one Black staggered again, Sachi dodged back from the other's Fad Edge. She almost stepped right into the path of a whirling Phantom Moon from one Illfang in the process; Dale's Avalanche crashed into the skill a moment before impact, sending the Illfang himself skidding backwards from the recoil.

Her reflexes had known her guildmate would be there in time. This wasn't their first raid. Not by a long shot.

Sachi ducked under her cloak again, this time using her STR and AGI to leap right over both Blacks' heads. Landing in a crouch, she swung her leg out in a Sweep Kick, reminding herself to thank Kirito for pointing her toward the Martial Arts skill. She missed one Black, but caught the one she'd Slanted before, sending him straight back to the floor.

The other Black was faster on the uptake than she'd quite expected, and his dagger flashed out in an unassisted stab that managed to nick her thigh. She swore under her breath, launching herself into a dive away from them both; the dagger had a mid-level Poison applied to it, and just the graze had done more damage than she'd expected.

So that's what Grimlock meant about level-scaling. They're still not as good as clearers, but they're not locked to the stats of the originals anymore.

That probably explained Kuradeel being sent flying by the Gem Bombardment of a two-headed barbarian boss. On the bright side, Godfree made himself useful by catching him before he could tumble through the smoke curtain and all the way out of the fight.

As Sachi landed and rolled back to her feet, she caught a glimpse of Klein catching a Hirazuki with his shoulder, only to retaliate with an Ukifune that flung Kuze halfway to the far wall. Probably a bad sign that the Hollow PKer was cackling, but Klein ignored his own hit and leapt after Kuze in a Flying Crane. The PKer followed suit, the two skills clashing midair in an explosion of light and noise.

No time. Focus!

She'd gained distance, leaping away from the poisoned knife. For now, she ignored the slow ebbing of her HP in favor of vanishing again, and darting back into the fray. She'd spent over a year training herself to fight PKers, and she hadn't stopped after the Laughing Coffin Crusade. Even if these were mindless fakes, she was going to remind them she wasn't just a victim anymore. That she knew how to fight by their rules.

Fighting knife-wielders was a challenge. Johnny Black had never been a clearer, but he was fast and agile, and with two of him at once it was tricky to keep them under control. Even turning invisible at every opportunity. She slashed one across the chest, and took a gash to the shoulder from the other; she smashed that other away with a Meteor Break that blew him clear across the room, and only narrowly avoided being shanked by the first.

"C'mon, little girl! Time for you to join the rest of your guild! Then I'll find your old boss, and make a clean sweep!"

The taunts didn't help. Sachi tried to shut them out, to remind herself that they weren't real, that they would never be able to make good on the threats. It mostly worked. She still knew the rage made her just that much slower, that much more reckless—she hissed at the bite of a knife against her cheek, when she drove in one more Horizontal instead of taking the time to dodge back and vanish again.

I can take it. We all can take it!

At point in the melee, she drove her sword into the floor again, rocking back the Blacks with another Serration Wave, and took the time to jump back and yank out an antidote. The two of them probably had double the HP of the original as of his death, their knives were poisoned, and their armor penetration was nasty. She was sure she was winning, but it was still hurting. Her HP was down far enough, between the poison and the Blacks' high critical hit rate, that she immediately followed the antidote with a potion.

With her cloak hiding her, at least she had time for that.

Taking a chance to check on everyone else, she winced at the state of the HP bars in her HUD. No one was close to critical yet; most were still farther down than she'd have liked. Vemacitrin had lost two arms, one axe and one katana, but the KoB team had taken a beating getting that far. The main tank's shield was visibly battered, several centimeters of its top edge sliced clean off and what was left covered in dents. She was pretty sure that another member wasn't using the same two-handed sword he'd started the fight with.

But it's going down. Keep it up, guys!

One Illfang exploded into azure fragments. Sachi felt a surge of hope—and then her stomach clenched, seeing that it had cost Dale his left arm in the process. As a two-handed swordsman, that put him out of the fight entirely. The arm would grow back, but not before the battle was over, one way or another.

Come on, come on! Sachi stared at her own HP gauge, willing it to go up faster. I need to get back in—!

"She's over there, idiots," Grimlock called idly. Still focused on whatever he was doing with the pit, he gestured vaguely in Sachi's direction. "You're tied into the system, why don't you already know that…. Kill her and be done with it, will you?"

That system can read my location. Why—?

No time to wonder. The two Blacks were already blazing toward her with twin Rapid Bites, and in the time it took Sachi to fling her cloak out of her way and lash out with her sword, they were almost on her. Angles meant she'd probably stop one of them short, but the Horizontal would be slowed enough by one body not to hit the other—

Her Horizontal did catch one Black across the chest, stopping his charge half a meter from her throat and tossing him back. The other… unexpectedly choked and flipped over backwards, his head flying clean off.

Sachi blinked, and only then realized someone else had lunged in from the side. "…Thanks, Lux."

"Don't mention it." The other girl had a look of vicious satisfaction on her face, one Sachi was afraid she'd be seeing in nightmares. "C'mon, let's finish this!"

Right. Survival first. Nodding, Sachi swung her sword up behind her shoulder, and with a yell launched back into the fray with a Sonic Leap. We're still going to win this!

Through it all, Grimlock kept typing at the keyboard, as though the fighting meant nothing to him at all.

Twin Iai skills bounced off each other, and Klein skidded back, boots kicking up sparks on the metal factory floor. Gritting his teeth at the damage that bled through, he launched himself right back into the fight with a Hirazuki. The thrusting skill flung him across the distance to his foe in less than a second—only for the grinning PKer to counter with a perfectly-timed Revolving Wheel. The rebound blasted the Hollow off his feet, only for him to ride it into a backflip, carrying him over the Vemacitrin copy as Kuradeel rocked it back with an Avalanche to the face.

Klein was tossed into a spin, and had a dizzying moment where he could neither move of his own volition nor see where he was going. Halfway through the spin, the backlash of the counter released him, and he set off a Revolving Wheel of his own in case anything tried to attack him before he recovered.

His instincts were right on the money. He got a glimpse of red fur and heard a growl as his Suzaku Blade shortstopped the remaining Illfang halfway into trying to chop him in half.

Under other circumstances, he'd have been proud of the trick. Setting off a Sword Skill in the middle of uncontrolled motion was one of the hardest feats in SAO. As it was, he was way, way too angry to feel anything resembling pride. If I'd just gutted Grimlock from the start, instead of letting him talk, going orange be damned—!

Klein flung his left hand out as his momentum slackened, catching himself before he could slam into one of the gear-covered walls. Using what inertia he had left, he ran a couple of steps up the wall and pushed off, launching into a Gatotsu midair.

Another trick he would otherwise have been proud of. Any midair Sword Skill activation was tricky; the Gatotsu was a left-handed version of the Hirazuki, which even with System Assist didn't come naturally to most players. It had taken Klein weeks to master it on solid footing, out of combat, and most of a year to even think of trying it in the air.

It was also possibly the first move he'd tried that his Hollow opponent hadn't expected. The copy-PKer had already launched himself into the air, but into a Flying Crane; he didn't seem to expect the thrust, and was left wide open for it. Though Klein missed the heart, when they collided midair over Grimlock's head his red-black blade did sink deep into the other's chest. This time, with a clean hit, there was no rebound, and Klein's momentum won out over his opponent's. They sailed clear over the pit, Klein landing right on top of the Hollow.

He tried to drive the blade in deeper, snarling with rage he couldn't yet direct at Grimlock. The Hollow, though, only laughed—and shoved at Klein's legs, allowing the Suzaku Blade to rip clear through his body just to get away from it. If his stats had been locked to the original player's, it probably would've killed him; whatever Grimlock had done to enhance him clearly gave him enough of a margin to risk it.

Damn. No wonder Kirito went for the kill on the real deal. This guy is good. If he'd lived longer, the Crusade would've been a hell of a lot uglier.

Klein was no stranger to PvP in the death game. He'd shed more blood than he cared to think about when the clearers finally destroyed Laughing Coffin. He'd sparred with a fair few players otherwise, training himself to be the guild leader Fuurinkazan needed. Of all those he'd fought, or even seen, in PvP, he put Kuze within the top five in raw skill. Kirito was better, as were Kizmel and Asuna the Flash. But the margin wasn't nearly as great as he'd have liked.

And that was when he was still alive. This guy… he's dead and he knows it. He's got nothing to lose.

It made Kuze's Hollow, if anything, more dangerous than the original. With the stat boosts Grimlock had somehow engineered, the only thing seeming to hold him back was not knowing any Sword Skill the original hadn't.

It was probably the most dangerous fight of Klein's life. Maybe even more than the Skull Reaper. He had to push aside his fury, forget about Griselda's disappearance. Everything he had, he had to focus in his blade. Sidestepping the upward swing of an Ukifune, he had to ignore Dale falling back, stump of an arm bleeding red particles. Slashing down with a Falling Leaf, trying to cut off Kuze's arm, he shut out the KoB's secondary tank screaming as Vemacitrin pounded him with the continuous fisticuffs of a Gem Bombardment.

Suzaku Blade dancing in a web of unassisted steel, Kuradeel's bellow as he shoved the wounded tank aside and laid into the Asura with a series of wild slashes faded from Klein's consciousness. Everything narrowed to the other Suzaku Blade, the gleam of Kuze's sunglasses in the Foundry's odd lighting, and the Hollow's wide, toothy grin.

Klein's HP was down by over a third, and another sliver vanished as Kuze ripped a Backhand up his torso. "You're good, Red!" the Hollow called out, laughing. "I bet you're the best katana-man the clearers have!" His grin narrowed, turning crueler. "But it took the Black Swordsman himself to kill me. And you're no Black Swordsman, Red."

Don't listen to him. Don't think. Fight!

Instinct kept Klein from tripping into the pit, leaping backwards as Kuze pressed the attack. Landing between Sachi, Lux, and Hollow Johnny Black, his footing was just a little off, and he stumbled—but that was fine, because it let him turn his landing into a backward somersault, neatly ducking under the Flying Crane that chased him.

That it distracted Black long enough for Sachi to vanish was a bonus. Klein didn't let himself dwell on it, launching himself from the somersault into a backflip, finally getting back to his feet. He was instantly met with the three back-and-forth slashes of the Writhing Snake; rather than take the time to curse himself for giving Kuze the opening, he only focused everything he had into dancing around the strikes. In the precious moments Kuze was locked into post-motion, he promptly hit the Hollow with an Ukifune, flinging him toward the ceiling again.

For the next couple of seconds, he was very busy, as the rest of the melee suddenly tumbled around him. The two-headed barbarian tried to punch his head off, forcing him to duck and blindly stab; as it screamed in two voices from the freak hit to a gem in its chest, he had to turn the duck into a side-roll, slipping underneath Illfang's nodachi.

Dynamm's cutlass abruptly poked out through Illfang's throat. It froze, growl dying to a confused-sounding whimper, and exploded, nodachi two centimeters from cutting off Klein's nose.

There was no time to celebrate. Vemacitrin came barreling through, remaining limbs all flailing, a grating, metallic laugh coming from all three of its mouths. Klein managed to scramble away; with a scream of defiance, the KoB main tank flung himself into the Asura's path just before it could cut Dynamm to pieces.

The scream turned shrill with terror a moment later, as the tank's shield shattered under the onslaught. It reached a crescendo right after, when Vemacitrin's remaining katana cut both his legs off just below the hips. He felt, shrieking, trying frantically to push himself away on his hands, knowing he couldn't make it in time. Klein, cursing, readied the Suzaku Blade for another Hirazuki, only for the two-headed barbarian to come at him from the side. The impact knocked another five percent off his HP and made his skill misfire, leaving him out of position and with no time to recover.

Vemacitrin's mad, unearthly cackling grew louder. Its remaining katana and axe spun like blender blades, ready to cut the screaming Knight to pieces—

"Eat this, freak!"

The snarl, unlike anything Klein had quite heard from Sachi before, was accompanied by an odd sound of surprise. It was followed a split second later by a black figure tumbling into Vemacitrin's path, limbs flailing comically. Hollow Johnny Black's confused yelp turned to a shriek in an instant, as he took the full force of the Asura's wrath.

"Not fair! You can't kill me again like this! It's not fair—!"

Hollow Black's voice cut off abruptly. He shattered into pieces, revealing a Vemacitrin that looked oddly puzzled—and stuck in post-motion.

In the tiny fraction of time the Asura was motionless, two more screams rang out. One high-pitched and terrified, the other low and full of pure rage. Godfree and Kuradeel charged into Klein's view, screaming, and slammed bodily into Vemacitrin. The original probably would've taken it without flinching. The copy Grimlock had forged lost its balance, and began to tilt.

The other Knights still on their feet crashed into Godfree and Kuradeel from behind, adding their force to the shove. With a metallic moan that made Klein's ears hurt, lack of pain in VR be damned, it lost its footing entirely, and tumbled into the pit.

The Knights only barely kept Godfree and Kuradeel falling in after it. Klein only saw part of that, distracted as he was by the two-headed barbarian—though with Sachi and Lux on hand, it only took another minute to finish it off. Given that he was fairly sure the thing was originally from somewhere around the Twenty-Seventh Floor or so, he wasn't too surprised.

What did surprise him, when it shattered into blue glass shards, was the discovery that it was pretty much the last of the copies Grimlock had sent after them. Sometime in the melee, the others had all been taken out. Except, he thought, his spine beginning to itch, one loose end—

"I told ya, you're no Black Sword—!"

No time to think. No time to try something smarter. Klein flipped the Suzaku Blade in his grip, and rammed it right through his own stomach, straight to the hilt. To the hilt—and sticking out a good meter behind him.

The other Suzaku Blade punched through his shoulder. Also to the hilt. Which meant Kuze was more than close enough to take Klein's katana right into his own gut. Not a fatal hit, and one an ordinary mob would probably have shrugged off. But Kuze's as close to human as a mob ever gets… and people like him never understand people like me.

Impaled in two places, with two copies of a Demon-class weapon, Klein's HP dropped like a rock. His own Hara-kiri was all too close to fatal. And before Hollow Kuze could recover from his surprise at the self-destructive attack, Klein ripped free of the PKer's blade, pulled his own out of his guts, and spun.

Surprised or not, Kuze was fast, even as an AI copy. He sprang back two meters, Suzaku Blade sliding back into its scabbard mid-leap. He landed nimbly, knees bending in a crouch. Hilt and scabbard both began to glow bright crimson, a flaring, unstable light that marked only the highest level of Sword Skills.

Majin Zekkuu. The most powerful skill the Katana possessed in Sword Art Online. Very nearly identical to the Shin Zekkuu—itself essentially a long-range Iai—it was about twice as powerful. Its power was balanced by a brutal post-motion delay of a full three seconds, but used wisely it could turn a battle from defeat to victory in an instant.

If it struck Klein now, he knew, he'd be flat-out obliterated. But two can play at that game.

Time slowed around him, his awareness narrowing to two swords, and the space between them. Klein's own Suzaku Blade clicked home in its scabbard a fraction of a second after Kuze's. Hilt and scabbard flared red, as if channeling his anger. Kuze began to grin, sunglasses shining with crimson light.

"Kiaiiiii!"

Two swords flashed out, Klein's a tiny fraction after Kuze's. Twin crescent moons, crimson edges ragged and unstable, clashed between them. For an endless instant, they seemed to war with each other, casting a bloody glow over the room.

When one Sword Skill met another, the stronger skill won. Equal skills canceled each other out… unless one side had another advantage over the other. Hollow Kuze's stats were boosted well beyond what his original had lived to achieve. His Suzaku Blade… wasn't.

Kuze's Majin Zekkuu split, breaking into half-crescents that promptly faded away. Klein's continued right on, wiping the grin right off Kuze's face, and then his face right off his body as his entire head was torn away. Caught in the backwash of the skill, it took only another moment for the rest of his body to break into azure fragments, and dissolve into nothing.

For a second, Klein thought he was going to follow him back to the grave. His HP was still dropping, well into the red. He still couldn't bring himself to regret it. "Stay dead this time, you son of a bitch," he whispered. Then, as his HP dropped under ten percent, he snatched open his belt pouch and yanked out a crystal. "Heal!"

"Klein!" Sachi rushed to his side, barely ahead of the rest of Fuurinkazan. "Klein, you big idiot—don't ever do that again! …Are you okay?"

He ignored her, and something in his expression made her flinch, turning pale. Taking a deep breath, anger pushing back any relief he might've felt at his HP climbing back up, he turned back to the instigator of it all. Lifting the Suzaku Blade once again, he began to stalk back toward the pit, and the console beside it. "Time's up, you bastard."

"Yes, it is," Grimlock agreed. He glanced up from the monitor, a wide, disturbed smile on his face. "It's done. She's finally here."

Chains rattled. The pit opened, spilling eerie green light into the factory. And the platform slowly rose back into view.

"What are we waiting for?" Kuradeel hissed. "Just kill him already! He's already thrown Hollows and bosses at us, we should just kill him before whatever thing he's come up with attacks us!"

"No!" Godfree held him back, the bearded axeman's STR overwhelming the swordsman's. "Not like this, Kuradeel. Not a green player. Not unarmed and defenseless."

"You call that defenseless?!"

Klein ignored them, only barely noticing the exchange through the red haze. He was just as angry—angrier, probably; he was sure Kuradeel only cared about his own life, not Griselda's murder—but Godfree was right. He and Sachi and Dale, they're right. Not like this.

I want him dead for Griselda. But I won't become him. I won't. …The second he draws a weapon, though….

He was samurai. He would be patient. No matter how infuriating it was that Grimlock didn't even seem to care that he was trapped in a room with fourteen very angry people who could turn him to digital paste in a second. No matter how infuriating the murderous blacksmith's glee was, as whatever abomination he'd murdered Griselda—again—to create rose out of the pit.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this moment," Grimlock remarked conversationally, watching the platform ascend with rapt attention. "It's been so long…. I haven't seen her in two years. Kayaba took her from me, the day he trapped us in here. Now, today… I finally have Yuuko back."

Yuuko…? Who's…? Oh, no. Klein's vision blurred; Sachi quickly grabbing his arm again brought him back to his senses, but only barely. "You son of a bitch… what have you done?"

"See for yourself." The mad blacksmith gestured grandly to the platform, just as it thudded to a halt, chains rattling with the sudden stop. "You've only known a twisted ghost of my wife, Samurai-san. Allow me to introduce you to the true Griselda."

Stepping away from the console, Grimlock gripped the tarp covering the platform, and yanked it off. Underneath was—as Klein had expected—a solid version of the ghost he'd known for months. Wearing the same armor she'd apparently died in, this Griselda was a solid, breathing avatar, just as Philia had described.

Unlike Philia's description, when this Griselda opened her eyes, there was awareness in them. Confused, bleary, but aware; Klein felt his heart clench at the sight, realizing what Grimlock had done. Somehow, Griselda's ghost had interfered with making a Hollow of her. With the ghost gone, so was the last trace of the original.

Damn you…!

"Griselda?" Grimlock said tenderly, reaching out for the Hollow. "Can you hear me? Yuuko?" He took her arm, and with his help she gingerly sat up. "Oh, Yuuko, it's been so long…. It's me, Yuuya. You… remember me, don't you?"

"…Yes," the Hollow replied, sounding like someone trying to remember how to speak. Blinking, she fixed her gaze on Grimlock. "Yes, of course I remember you. I remember… everything."

Dammit! Klein's fingers clenched around the Suzaku Blade's hilt, watching Grimlock help the Hollow of his wife down from the platform. The pure, twisted happiness on Grimlock's face as he moved to embrace his creation made the samurai's stomach roil in fury and revulsion. This is sick…! After everything he did, he just—!

SMACK!

Grimlock reeled back, one hand going up to cradle his cheek—the cheek that now had a wireframe hand-print glowing on it, courtesy of Griselda's ferocious slap. His other hand tried and failed to catch himself on something, anything, the force of the blow nearly knocking him off his feet. He stumbled, and finally landed with a heavy thump on his backside. His hat flew off from the impact, as if in final insult. "Wh-what?" he blurted, eyes wide. "Yuuko, it's me! What are you doing—?!"

"I said I remember everything, Yuuya," Griselda said, carefully flexing her hand, then stretching her arms and legs one by one. "Right up to the moment you murdered me."

"He what?!" Godfree exclaimed, his own eyes widening in shock. "I hadn't heard about that!"

"You're a bit late to the party," Kuradeel said dryly. The greasy Knight folded his arms, seemingly content to just watch now. "The rest of us figured it out a while ago."

"H-how can you say that, Yuuko?" Grimlock protested, shakily clambering back to his feet. "Laughing Coffin murdered you! I heard from the info brokers, the Armlet you were going to sell ended up part of their plot with the zombies. I would never—"

"Yes, you would. You did." Face twisted in anger and pain, Griselda took an unsteady step toward him. "I may have only been a ghost this past year, Yuuya, but that just made it easier for me to see things. I was there, watching, when you made your deals with Laughing Coffin. To support them, in exchange for their help in remaking me."

It's her, Klein realized, giddy relief rushing through him. Suzaku Blade falling from suddenly nerveless fingers, he dropped his knees. It's really her! He thought he was creating a regular Hollow, but the system just combined her ghost with the body…. …I have got to ask Kirito later how the servers work with ghosts….

"You have it all wrong, Yuuko," Grimlock told her. Managing to reclaim some calm, he reached out for her, entreating. "Yes, I worked with Laughing Coffin, but it was only to bring you back. It was Schmitt who betrayed Golden Apple, he admitted it himself. How could you ever think I would betray you? My own wife?"

His dismay at the accusation sounded pretty convincing. Klein had a feeling the only one in the room he was even close to fooling was himself. From the look on her face, it certainly wasn't making Griselda any happier.

"I was the guildmaster, Yuuya," she said, slowly and precisely, obviously not used to a corporeal body anymore. "We were never clearers, but we got by. I led us as far as we got by paying attention. I know what happens to items in Inventory when someone dies. Anything equipped is either destroyed, or falls on the spot. Anything in Inventory is lost… unless the player is married. A husband and wife's Inventory is completely merged." She took a deep breath, hands flexing into fists and loosening just as quickly. "I remember everything, Yuuya. Including the fact that I never equipped the Necromaster Armlet."

Smoking gun, Klein thought, fighting the urge to clap; he was pretty sure Griselda wouldn't appreciate applause just then. Okay, sure, there's one other way it could've gone down, but we all know it didn't, don't we?

"Of course," Grimlock said smoothly, only the sweat forced by the emotional expression system betraying him. "I got rid of the Armlet later, that's all. I couldn't bear to make a profit off it, not after it got you killed, but I didn't want to stir up anything with the rest of the guild, either, so I kept quiet—"

"Enough." Griselda's harsh rasp, the whip-crack of a guildmaster and betrayed anger of a woman scorned rolled into one, cut her husband off sharply. She took another step closer, planting one hand on the console when her balance wavered. "Stop lying to me, Yuuya! You killed me! We both know it!" Face twisting in pain, tears running down, she reached out her other hand toward him. "Why?!"

The scream, by rights, should've blown the green smoke out of the room, if not knocked the whole building down. It certainly made the KoB party back off—even Kuradeel seemed to decide getting some distance was a good idea, busying himself pulling the legless tank out of the blast radius.

Klein only watched, with cold satisfaction, at the way Grimlock shrank back, confidence finally broken. He flinched from the scream, and his face fell. His hands trembled, and he looked a breeze away from falling over again.

"Why?" he said finally, so softly that only the factory's weird acoustics carried it to the witnesses. "Because I didn't kill you, Yuuko. Not really. Kayaba did, when he trapped us all in here. The Yuuko I knew, the Yuuko I loved, the Yuuko I married… she died long before I reached out to PoH, and slipped Schmitt his instructions."

"…What?"

"You weren't her anymore!" Grimlock snapped, eyes suddenly fiery. "The Yuuko I married, she was the ideal wife. Like she was designed to be the perfect wife, who would always follow her husband. Cute, and obedient, and never quarreling. We were perfect together! But then…." His hands clenched into fists. "Then this game happened, and you—she—started to change."

Ooh, boy. I don't like the sound of this….

"I was terrified when Kayaba trapped us," he said harshly, through gritted teeth. "Every moment, I was scared out of my mind. But Yuuko… she took to fighting with a sword like she was born to it. She learned to fight, far better than I ever did. Where I was too frightened to step out of the inn, she was decisive. I wanted us to hide away, to wait it out… and she opposed me. She created a guild, gathered other members, started training them… even in the real world, she'd never looked so fulfilled, so full of life. Not in all the time we were married…."

"It's true," Griselda got out, when Grimlock paused. Trembling, she said, "As terrible as this world is, I found myself here. Being a guild leader, fighting…." She swallowed, shakily wiping away tears. "I never felt more alive. …Why didn't you say something, Yuuya? Why… why would you kill me…?"

"Because that wasn't who I married," he hissed. He took one trembling step toward her, boot ringing on the metal floor. "The Yuuko I married was gone. Even if we made it back to the real world, the life we'd had was over. The quiet and obedient Yuuko I loved would never return." His shoulders trembled. "Don't you understand? If we returned to the real world, and Yuuko asked for a divorce… how could I possibly bear the shame?"

It probably said something about the way SAO had changed him that it took Klein a second to remember ordinary people might care. It didn't stop his rage from burning back to life, at Grimlock's words and at the shocked tears they drew from Griselda's eyes. You bastard…!

"So," Grimlock went on, voice and shoulders trembling with emotion, "while I was still her husband, in this world where killing is legal…. I wanted to seal the Yuuko I loved in my memories. Surely that's not such a bad wish, don't you agree?"

"You… killed me… for that…?" Griselda's voice shook, tears pouring down her face. Trembling so hard she nearly fell, she stared at him. "You… you ruined everything… for that…?"

"What is wrong with you?!" Sachi burst out, exploding to her feet. Her sword was in her hand, shakily pointing toward the mad blacksmith. "Shame?! Shame?! You were ashamed that she was strong enough to do what you couldn't?! Strong enough to fight?! To train others to fight?! To reach for the frontlines, and help save us all?!" She looked half a breath from starting a Sword Skill; her boots rattled on the factory floor. "You murdered her for that?!"

Grimlock glanced at her, eyes red with emotion, and he smiled a twisted smile. "Isn't it reason enough, Swordswoman-san? To preserve a love forever?"

"…No," Griselda rasped, drawing all eyes back to her. "No, Yuuya. You… you never loved me at all, did you?" She pushed away from the console, both hands clenching into shaking fists. "What you had for me… it wasn't love. I wasn't your love, I was just your… your toy."

He recoiled as if she'd slapped him again. "How can you say that?" he snapped back. "After everything, after all we had together—!"

"If you loved me," she said, voice shaking, staring at him through watery eyes, "you would've known I wouldn't have left you behind. If you loved me, you would've talked to me, and we would've worked things out. If you loved me…." She took a deep, shuddering breath. Wiped her eyes with one angry, jerky motion. "If you loved me," she said, fury returning to her voice, "you would never have tried to 'remake' me like a doll!"

Grimlock jerked, eyes widening. Then he sagged, looking for all the world like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Tellingly, Klein thought, he had no comeback to her last barb at all. He had the look of man who thought he'd gotten his heart's desire, only to have it yanked away at the last second.

Klein had no sympathy for him. At all.

"I would never have divorced you," Griselda said, voice falling to a bitter whisper. "I loved you… the man I thought you were. But now…." She slowly shook her head. "You were never the man I thought you were. I was never the woman you thought I was. And now… it is over. Whatever we had, you broke, Yuuya. Not me." She turned her back on him, turning to look toward Fuurinkazan. "Klein… let's go. I… I can fight again, with this body. And… there's nothing left to do here."

He could only nod silently, sheathe his sword, and hold out a hand to her. There was nothing at all he could say. Nothing he could do for her, except what he'd done for Sachi and Lux: offer her a place to go. A place to rest.

She was just starting around the edge of the Hollow-forging pit when Grimlock spoke again. A low, broken whisper, carried only by the Foundry's acoustics and the strange physics of the Hollow Area. "Then… it really is over. Everything…. This is all I can do now."

The pit was still between the two of them and the raid group. There was no way to reach, nothing Klein could do but scream in rage, when Grimlock lunged for Griselda. Still unsteady in her new body, she lost her footing in an instant, and the two of them tumbled into the pit.

"Griselda…!"

This time, Sachi didn't even try to hold Klein back. She was right there with him, as he hurled himself desperately for the pit. The rest of Fuurinkazan was close behind, even Dale, missing arm or no. They were all with him, at his back like they always were, when he slammed to the floor at the edge of the pit.

They were there to help him, when he grasped the gloved hand that clung to one of the Hollow pit's chains. To pull Griselda up from the brink, even as a scream cut off in the shattering of glass somewhere below.

Not that she needed much help. Unused to her new body, she'd still had the strength and reflexes to catch herself, when her husband tried to kill her once again. The guildmaster of Golden Apple caught Klein's arm in a strong grip, and pulled herself up as much as he pulled her.

Scrambling away from the edge, they collapsed onto the hot metal floor. For a long moment, all any of them could do was pant, from the virtual exertion as much as from the emotional exhaustion of the last few minutes. From a battle with the dead to a lover's quarrel turned deadly, the last ten minutes had been more tiring than most Floor Boss raids.

Finally, Klein turned to look properly at the former ghost. "…I'm sorry, Griselda," he said, knowing the words were pathetic but not knowing anything else he could say.

Breathing heavily, she shook her head. "The Yuuya I knew… he died years ago," she whispered. "I don't know if I never really knew him, or if SAO changed him… but the man who just died wasn't him. Not really." Shakily, she pushed herself to her feet, and stretched out a hand to help Klein up in turn.

Then, when he was upright again, she silently leaned into his shoulder, and cried.

The wind blowing across the Foundry's roof felt strange. Partly, of course, because everything in the Hollow Area was just a little bit off, most of it unpolished, some of it more polished than regular Aincrad. There was an odd blunt quality to it, like it was just a bit thicker than it should've been.

More than that, Griselda wasn't used to feeling much of anything. After eleven months with little more than sight and hearing—and on a bad day, not even that—feeling the wind ruffle her hair was downright weird. Her clothes felt a little rough, and she suspected she was going to need help balancing for at least a couple of days.

But I'm… solid again. Closing her eyes, she swayed in the wind, knowing Klein would catch her if she tipped too far. Fuurinkazan's guildmaster hadn't been far from her side since leaving the heart of the Foundry. Even while the rest of the guild poked at the factory systems, and scoured the place for any stray Hollows, Klein had stuck close, ready to catch her if she stumbled. …What am I?

She didn't think she was a Hollow. The glitch that had allowed access to the Hollow Area hadn't even happened until nearly a year after her murder, and she'd been aware since a few hours after. It didn't seem likely she was truly a ghost, either; she'd never been one to dismiss the idea of the supernatural, but the fact that SAO's systems recognized her existence in some way made a technological explanation more likely, in her eyes.

Especially since it hadn't just "recognized" her. It had somehow merged her ghostly self with the Hollow avatar Grimlock had created. Unfortunately, checking the control console hadn't provided any answers. For reasons known only to Kayaba, the relevant settings were written in Sindarin, which no one in either Fuurinkazan nor the KoB team could read well enough. All that they'd been able to figure out was that Grimlock had generated her new avatar with stats comparable to those required for clearing the current frontlines.

An odd choice, given his claim that her strength was one reason he'd felt he "needed" to kill her. Griselda could only speculate that he'd wanted his "perfect" wife physically able to survive.

Though what he thought he was going to do with my mind…. Griselda shivered, and not at all from the chill of the Hollow Area's strange winds. She'd wondered, for the past year, why her husband might've wanted her dead. The truth was so twisted she was afraid she was going to have nightmares for years. It put their entire marriage in a new, horrifying light.

She must've swayed too close to the edge, either from emotion, her lack of practice with a solid body, or both, because Klein's hand was suddenly on her shoulder. "Easy there," he said gently, steadying her. "You've died a few too many times already. Be pretty embarrassing if you fell off a roof, y'know?"

He didn't ask her if she was all right. Griselda appreciated that. "Thank you," she said quietly, taking a short step back from the edge. "…But are you sure you should be here, worrying about me? You ought to go join Team Kirito."

Now that the threat from the Foundry was over, she expected it to be the natural course. Especially knowing that PoH was probably already at the Sanctuary, with what were supposedly perfect copies of its Keys. Godfree, to her—and Fuurinkazan's—disgust, had quickly led his team back through a Gateway, ostensibly to try and call for reinforcements, which should've made the situation even more urgent.

Klein, though, shook his head. "It's too late." He swept the fingers of his free hand through the air, setting his menu to visible; only then did Griselda realize he'd been reading a message while she was lost in thought. "They got hit while we were in the Foundry. Kirito didn't have time to give details, but it was bad. They got to the Sanctuary, though… and he was pretty sure it was going to lock them in."

He pointed toward the Sanctuary, barely visible in the distance. Griselda squinted at it, the high-level Searching her new avatar had letting her zoom in. There was some kind of fighting just before the bridge leading to it; she couldn't quite make out what, but it looked to be a lot of golems… and more Swordmasters than she thought were even in the Hollow Area.

Just like the message had suggested, the Sanctuary's door was shut. A lurid red system message glowed across it: [Access Denied].

"Whatever happens now," Klein said, quietly and grimly, "Kirito and the girls are on their own."

The shining white blade bit deep into the golem's left shoulder, almost taking the arm clean off. As the thing made an incomprehensible sound in response, Kirito yanked Dark Repulser free, turning the motion into a spin that brought Elucidator whirling up to slash across its chest. High as its defense was, it still staggered back from the blows, nearly destroyed.

Kirito didn't even try to follow up, instead continuing his rotation and ducking under the slash from another golem's huge sword that would've taken his head clean off. Coming out of the spin behind it, he slashed both blades up in a double-backhand across the back of its head—a completely unassisted blow, which even with the raw power of those two swords wouldn't normally have defeated such a tough enemy.

Scratching off the "E" on the back of the golem's skull left it falling instantly anyway, quickly shattering to pieces and giving him an opening to lunge for the next one. This time he did use a Sword Skill, the Twin Stab lunging skill carrying him four meters forward in an instant. Impacting hard on a golem's chest, they didn't penetrate more than a couple of centimeters, but did send it flailing backward, careening into two others.

Lisbeth does good work. I'd hate to fight these things with anything less.

Nezha's chakram whizzed into the gap, and past. The former Legend Brave's depth perception was ruined by his FNC; his ability to aim beyond the distance where that would've mattered had been honed by two years with his unconventional weapon. On the return trip, it sliced right across yet another golem's animating inscription, bounced, and soared back to him. As the golem staggered from the blow, Strida's wolf leapt into the fray, teeth snapping out to finish the job.

Kirito charged into the widening opening, not even bothering to check the golem he'd left nearly disarmed behind him. He knew, even before he heard it shatter to pieces, that his partner would finish the job. Kizmel had his back. She always had his back.

One of Rain's swords flew past, hitting a golem in the knee and bouncing, vanishing midair as she reclaimed it—he made a mental note to ask how she did that; she'd been using even more advanced throwing techniques lately—and he followed up. Dark Repulser slashed down, severing the limb, even as Elucidator slashed out to the side to parry another golem's sword. He left that flanker to Kizmel, who hit it from the side with a yell, and used the maimed golem as a springboard to leap into the next group.

It was reckless. It left no margin for error, and a graze from a golem's mace on his way through reminded him that there was no time to heal. But there was no time.

Team Kirito and Rain's KoB team had only been able to make part of the journey to the Sanctuary via the Hollow Area's tunnel network. The northern end emerged right from the base of the mountain, leaving them no choice but to go overland the rest of the way to the bridge leading to the Sanctuary. It was risky, but they'd had no choice. When PoH had finally left for the Sanctuary himself, they knew they couldn't take the time for any kind of roundabout approach. If he got into the Sanctuary, they were all dead anyway.

"Certainty of death versus small chance of success?" Philia had grinned wryly, in the last, hurried strategy meeting. "What are we waiting for?"

So Fuurinkazan and Godfree's KoB team had gone off to the Foundry, to try to stop PoH's armies. Kirito and Rain had been left to lead their parties to the heart of it all—to the heart of Aincrad itself, going by the Elf War quest's lore. Who controlled the Sanctuary, controlled the fate of the Steel Castle.

Over a year and a half, and it finally ends here… with PoH. After all the trouble he gave us in those days, it's kind of fitting.

They'd expected Hollows to block their path, and had only hoped that the other group's simultaneous attack on the Foundry would at least split them up. They'd expected some of the Golems of Gabirol, too, after the KoB's introduction to the Hollow Area. Fighting off roughly half of each, or at least cutting a path through, they'd expected to manage. Barely.

Emerging from the tunnel network a couple hundred meters from the bridge to the Sanctuary, they hadn't expected to find nothing but golems… and, from the look of it, pretty much all the golems in the Hollow Area. Which on the one hand meant that Fuurinkazan was probably having an easier time than expected, with the comparatively fragile Hollows. On the other, it meant that an army of damage sponges stood between Kirito's group and the Sanctuary. Right when, for all they knew, they had only minutes until PoH killed them all without a fight.

So a full-on banzai charge was the only option. Kirito took ruthless advantage of the raw stats of Elucidator and the newly-forged Dark Repulser, barreling through with hardly a care for defense. Kizmel followed close behind, and whenever possible right at his side, Grayswandir finishing off golems he maimed in passing, her shield protecting his flank. Philia kept barely half a pace behind, using her Swordbreaker to dismember any golems she could reach with it, desperate to at least cut down on incoming attacks.

Rain's KoB team kept pace with them, her thrown swords and Nezha's chakram leading the way, Strida and his wolf taking any openings they found, and Gunther and Ral holding the flanks, while Kumari danced through it all. Half of them were new to the KoB, but Kirito was glad to see they all lived up the guild's elite reputation.

It was reckless. It was insane. They were all bleeding HP, even their skill and high levels not letting them get through unscathed. But they were barely fifteen meters to the bridge, finally, and Kirito began to hope they'd get there in time. The land was narrowing, so close to the bridge, which on the one hand left less room to maneuver, but on the other gave Kirito the opening to Shoulder Charge a golem clear off, into the abyss. This close, there were only a handful of golems left in their path, and if they could just get inside, he was sure it would be down to just PoH himself—

An azure sphere formed on the bridge. Of the half-dozen golems still in the way, half of them turned toward it, clearly recognizing as well as Kirito did that someone was, impossibly, teleporting in. Apparently programmed to simply attack anything within reach, they charged before the newcomer even had time to fully materialize.

Oh, no. The only one who could possibly just appear out of nowhere like that is—

An impossibly huge sword flashed out, the Whirlwind skill slamming into the three golems like an enormous baseball bat. Groaning in what sounded like surprise, they tumbled off, flailing, into the endless sky below.

The remaining three apparently took that as a challenge. A second later, they were simply hit hard enough to be split in half, ignoring their high defense entirely. As they collapsed and shattered into blue glass fragments, their killer straightened, slung her huge blade over her shoulder, and casually adjusted her black suit.

"Hi, guys," Strea said with an easygoing smile. "Whew! Looks like I got here just in time."

The words were casual. Cheerful. Friendly, even. Kirito wasn't the only one who realized they were the worst news they'd gotten all day. With golems still coming from behind, the KoB team immediately fanned out in the rear, Rain pausing only long enough to give Kirito a nod. Her team would hold the line, that nod said, until Team Kirito found a way past the new problem.

I only hope we can.

"Strea," he began, carefully keeping his swords pointed toward the ground. "You know why we're here, right?"

"Of course I do. Kinda obvious. You wouldn't still be here after getting Philia back, otherwise." Strea's smile widened to a grin. "Good job on that, by the way! You found a way around me that time, and rescued her. Congrats on getting the team back together!"

"This," Kizmel muttered under her breath, "is why I find her deeply disturbing." Sighing, she stepped up to Kirito's side, fixing Cardinal's agent with a resolute stare. "Strea. We need to go through. You know what's in there. We haven't seen PoH yet, so we don't know for sure he's gotten in, but if he has—"

"Oh, he's in," Strea confirmed, giving the Sanctuary's stone door a quick, unconcerned glance over her shoulder. "Gotta hand it to that Grimlock guy. I never would've thought he could generate Keys that match the system specifications, even with so much time to practice. Humans really are ingenious."

"Then you know we have to get in there." Philia's voice and face were pleading, and she took half a step closer to the bridge. "Please, Strea. This just like—no, this is worse than the zombies. If PoH uses what's in there, we all die, just like that."

"And I'm very sorry about that," Strea replied, smile dropping. "But my orders are clear." She swung her blade around again, spun it, and planted the end of it on the bridge. Resting her hands on its pommel, she declared, "You can't pass."

No, dammit! Not now! Not this close! "Strea, we have to!" Kirito took one step closer, trying to ignore the sounds of combat behind him. Rain and her team were holding the golems off, but there were a lot of them, and they were running out of time. "What good is system stability if PoH destroys the system?!"

"It's a bad situation," the NPC acknowledged, with a casual shrug. "But Cardinal's orders are clear. Whatever measures are being taken, no one is to gain access to the Sanctuary."

"Then go in and stop him yourself," Kizmel suggested; Kirito hoped he was the only one who could catch the near-panic in her voice. "I give you my word, if you end PoH's threat, we will not even attempt to enter the Sanctuary. All we ask is that he be stopped! We don't need it to be us!"

A logical argument. Kirito hoped desperately it would get through; they'd managed to talk Strea out of their path once before, maybe they could again….

"I don't have that authority," Strea said, shaking her head. "No one is allowed past. With the Sanctuary unlocked and other methods locked out by the system administrator, guarding this bridge is the only way to guarantee it." Though her tone was still friendly, her gaze was sharp, first meeting Kizmel's, then locking onto Kirito's. "You know you can't beat me, guys. Please. Walk away."

Kirito's hands clenched on the hilts of his swords, and he gritted his teeth in frustration and barely-restrained terror. If they could just get by, he knew he'd have a fighting chance against PoH. The man in the black poncho was terrifyingly skilled, but he wasn't invincible. Kirito had spent a long time preparing for this battle, and he had the measure of the man's weapons.

But she's right. We can't get past. And Cardinal, dammit, is going to stabilize itself into a system crash at this rate! Dammit, Kayaba, you're supposed to be fair; how is this giving us a fighting chance—?!

No. Wait. There was one way. It was suicidal, literally, but given the way SAO's physics engine worked—especially in the Hollow Area, where a beta version reigned—it was possible. The game engine could ignore the limitations of human muscles, allow for superhuman strength and speed, but to make the most lifelike environment possible, it had the most precise collision detection of any game in history.

Sword Art Online obeyed geometry. By the same token, it obeyed leverage. Unless Strea had been given super-density, there was one option her stats couldn't overcome.

It's suicidal. She might be too fast. But we have to try….

"Kirito-kun," Kizmel whispered in his ear, low and warning. "Please don't consider what I think you're considering."

He didn't want to. But a yell from behind presaged a sudden, sharp drop in Rain's HP, and terror at the idea of waiting any longer started to overcome good sense. "We have to," he whispered back, already steeling himself for the most insane Corkscrew ever. "We can't wait any longer—"

Before she could give him the tongue-lashing he could see building in her eyes, an azure flash blinded them, cutting off the discussion. Snapping their attention toward the bridge again, they were just in time to see another teleport sphere fade away. And this time, it was Strea's turn to be visibly surprised.

"Vanel," she said, voice so high it was almost a question. "What are you doing here?"

"What you should be," the Cardinal NPC disguised as a Dark Elf replied grimly. She didn't draw her sword, but her hostility toward her fellow agent was obvious. "We're meant to aid the players, Strea. You know that was what we were made to do."

"And when the system administrator changed the parameters, Cardinal altered us to match," Strea replied, unmoved. "Our current mission is system stability, Vanel, you know that. Our methods are different, but the goal is the same."

"I don't think it is." Vanel surprised Kirito then by taking a step away from the bridge, sidling toward one edge of the narrow cliff. "The system isn't stable if it's collapsed, Strea. Aiding the players is maintaining system stability. You are going to destroy the system, if you continue to stand in their way."

"That's not the way it works, Vanel. We obey Cardinal. You know that." Strea tilted her head, brow furrowing in a puzzled frown. "You and I are the same. You can't act against the system's parameters. If you tried, Cardinal would delete your program and reload a backup."

"We're not the same. Not quite." Vanel paused, far enough to one side now to be looking at Strea at a slight angle. A chill began to creep down Kirito's spine at the sight. "Cardinal improvised, reworking our code. We see the world from different perspectives. I can see that your methods are wrong."

"What is she doing?" Philia whispered, glancing between the two NPCs in confusion, before turning to look at Kirito. "Is she going to fight for us?" A hopeful note raised her voice. "She's a Cardinal NPC, too, so she probably could—"

No. That's not it. "Vanel," Kirito began, taking a step forward, "don't do this…."

"Stay back, Kirito," Vanel said sharply—and drew her sword, which he realized with a start had the telltale yellow sheen of a weapon coated with a Paralysis poison. "I will protect you… even if I have to incapacitate you, as well."

…She really is just as alien as Strea. Paralyzing us now? Shouts rang out behind him, and the sound of a Sword Skill he was pretty sure had at least six hits, reminding him just how urgent the situation was. She can't be serious!

"She can't do it, Kirito," Strea told him, eyes still locked on her fellow MHCP. "Her stats haven't been boosted like mine have. Vanel isn't programmed to fight hopeless battles. Whatever you're trying isn't working," she added, returning her full attention to Vanel. "You won't pass. I've already sent an error report. Cardinal is busy trying to compensate for PoH's actions, but you'll soon—"

"Too late. I'm sorry, Strea."

Kirito and Kizmel lunged toward her as one, realizing what she was about to do. "No!"

Too late. Too late for them, too late even for the startled Strea. Vanel hurled herself from where she stood, flying across the gap between cliff edge and bridge, centimeters ahead of the two Swordmasters' grasp. As fast as Strea was, she'd never expected the action, and only had time to start raising her sword before Vanel slammed into her.

The bridge was narrow. Strea's STR, monstrous as it was, did nothing for her footing. Having a body of equivalent mass slam into her at high speed, in a region with uncertain physics, knocked her off-balance in an instant, and she toppled to the side. Flailing for the edge, to dislodge Vanel, to do something, Strea fell.

Vanel fell with her, down into the abyss beneath the Hollow Area. As she plummeted with her sister, she had time only to call out, voice fading with distance, "Finish it, Swordmasters…!"

Kizmel caught Kirito just shy of the cliff edge, yanking his arm back before he could stumble and follow them down. Together, they watched in sick horror as the two NPCs tumbled, swiftly shrinking to specks… and disappeared in the endless clouds beneath the Steel Castle.

Kizmel watched Vanel and Strea vanish into the dark clouds below, and felt her heart twist. Clutching Kirito's arm, her eyes squeezed shut, trying desperately to hold in tears. Strea had been their enemy as much as she'd been their ally. They'd never gotten a chance to know Vanel, not really. But the two of them were among the few in the Steel Castle—the few anywhere—who were akin to her in nature.

Was there… truly no other way? Vanel had made plain her willingness to paralyze them to keep them from interfering, yet Kizmel couldn't help but think she and Kirito might've been able to stop her anyway. Unlike Strea, her abilities had only been equivalent to an average Swordmaster's. We might've stopped her, had we only tried.

Kirito's arm slid around her shoulders, pulling her close. "…She did her duty, Kizmel," he whispered, in her own Sindarin tongue. "She fought for the Swordmasters. You would've done the same."

Duty. Yes, she would have, in Vanel's place. And had, once. Knowing her husband's intent, she chose not to remind him they'd both decided her own sacrifice had been a mistake, one only undone by a miracle. After all, her own duty had changed the moment she'd bound herself, body and soul, as his wife. My duty is to fight to live. Vanel… did what she believed her duty demanded of her.

Which reminded her of another difference between them. Pulling back from cliff edge, she leaned into Kirito's embrace, and looked up at him. "Kirito-kun… are they truly dead? They are neither Swordmasters—players—nor… whatever it is I am. Could they have survived…?"

He shrugged, a pensive frown creasing his brow. "I don't know," he admitted, eyes shadowed. "Without a look at SAO's code, I couldn't guess. But…." He smiled, a bittersweet smile, and gently ran a hand through her hair. "From a technical standpoint, it's definitely possible. So… let's not give up on them."

Kizmel felt some of the weight ease from her shoulders. It was a small hope, perhaps, especially in the game of death Kayaba had created. But it was hope, and not a foolish one. She would take it, after everything she had lost in the past two years.

"Oi! We've got a problem here, guys!"

Rain's shout brought them both back to the problems of the present, and they turned as one to look back. Whatever hope Kizmel had mustered was pushed aside in an instant: the KoB team was still fighting the Golems of Gabirol. Still holding them back. Against the army they'd originally faced, they would've easily triumphed, given just a little time.

There was no longer any sign that they'd thinned the horde at all. There were more than had been around at the start, and Kizmel could see more positively swarming toward them from other corners of the Hollow Area. Far, far too many for even a single party to hold back.

"Oh, no," Philia said faintly, staring with wide, horrified eyes at the mass of animate stone. "Did the Foundry team fail…?"

"We'd have heard something," Kirito said, confident despite his own pallor. "I won't believe that they'd have gone down without someone having time to send a message. More likely Grimlock hit a panic button or something. We know he was gradually getting more system access. And who knows what PoH is up to in the Sanctuary." He took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders. "This is still way too much for us to handle. We'd better fall back into the Sanctuary—"

"Like hell!" Ral shouted, slamming her shield into a pair of golems, staggering them back while her partner Gunther hacked down one more like a stone tree. "You're gonna have a hell of a time just with PoH! If you have an army of these things hit you from behind, it's all over!"

"We're staying right where we are," Strida called, even as he whirled into a Treble Scythe to force another trio back a few precious meters. "We stand on the bridge, and no one may pass. This is our role, Black Swordsman, Lady Kizmel! Yours is in there! Finish what you started two years ago, and we will hold the line!"

Of course. If anyone would know, he would. Kizmel's hand clenched on the hilt of her saber, and she vowed that if they both survived the next few hours, she was going to learn Strida's story. What the man had experienced dealing with her people, in a quest line that had not included her. What had driven him to it, and from there to the frontlines.

"He's right!" Nezha hurled his chakram into the melee, sending it on a complex flight that ricocheted across half a dozen golems, hitting at least two of them just right to scratch their weakness and destroy them on the spot. "Kirito! You stopped him when he used me, now it's up to you to stop him for good! You and Kizmel-san are the only ones who can do it!"

"Go!" Rain yelled over her shoulder, throwing sword after sword, with a speed and precision Kizmel hadn't thought possible. She was down at least thirty percent of her HP, and her red-trimmed white coat was getting tattered at the edges, but she didn't retreat even a single step. "None of this matters if you don't stop him! Go!"

Kizmel didn't have to see Kirito's face to know he was at least as conflicted as she was. Probably more so. Nothing wounded him more, nothing terrified him more than others fighting and dying for his sake. As much a veteran as she was of war, she couldn't say she disagreed. Her eyes burned at the thought of leaving Rain and her people to such odds. Yet they're right. We can't delay any longer, and we have no hope of victory without someone guarding our backs—

A chime sounded in her ear, and Kirito jumped as if he'd just heard the same thing. Opening her menu with the reflexes a year and more as a Swordmaster had drilled into her, Kizmel found a message waiting for her.

[I pay my debts, My Lady. Forgive me for being late.]

Philia suddenly jumped, pointing excitedly. "Guys! Look!"

Crimson, azure, and brilliant white light was suddenly tearing into the rear ranks of the army of golems. From the southwest, toward the Foundry, a mass of red-trimmed white charged in. "The Knights of the Blood," Kirito whispered, eyes wide. "Asuna. How did she…?"

Coming from around the Watchtower, to the southeast, figures in blue armor carved a similar blaze of colored light into that flank of the golem army. Less powerful than the Knights, if Kizmel was any judge, but more of them. "The Divine Dragons," she breathed, genuinely stunned. "Guildmaster Lind. Why…?"

Rain hurled one more sword into the nearer ranks of golems and yanked a Healing Crystal from her belt pouch. "No more excuses, guys! We've got this! Get in there!"

Kizmel could already see even more golems coming up from behind the reinforcing Swordmasters. Even now, they were massively outnumbered. But now it's merely dangerous, not certain death. Asuna, Lind… thank you.

She turned to look at Kirito, and then Philia. Both nodded, eyes bright. "Time to go," Kirito said quietly. Then, louder, "Rain, everyone! Don't you dare die out here!"

Rain laughed, spinning a sword in each hand. "Same to you! We'll see you when it's done!"

It was time. As one, the three of them spun and ran onto the bridge, no longer guarded by an impossible foe. Narrow enough no army could've crossed it, it was enough for three Swordmasters to sprint abreast, with only a slim chance of a careless step leading them into the abyss below. Sturdy, despite hanging over empty air, it rang strangely with the sound of their footfalls, almost metallic despite being oddly-textured stone.

Kizmel felt strange, as the dark castle of the Sanctuary grew closer. She'd heard whispers of it, in her youth. Tales of a place that governed Aincrad's very existence. She'd believed them to be nothing but clever myths, until she became a Royal Guard of the Pagoda Knights Brigade. Until the day she'd been assigned to recover the Keys that would open the Sanctuary's door, and learned it held a secret that could not be allowed out.

At the very end of what her friends knew as the Elf War quest, she'd learned the truth: that one who opened the Sanctuary would have the power to control the Steel Castle, or destroy it. A terrifying thought, but a threat she'd believed ended with the death of the Fallen King. Learning, nearly a year later, that it was all a game gone wrong had given her the hope that it had never really existed at all, save in "game lore".

Racing for the heavy, black stone door, Kizmel was faced with the strange realization that the lie she'd lived and the truth she'd grown into had finally met. Whether magic or technology, the very core of her world lay before her.

As she, Kirito, and Philia came to the base of the stairs leading up to that door, she was faced with another realization, one of fears confirmed: the Sanctuary's heavy door stood ajar. Its locks had been undone at last, by clever human trickery, rendering her efforts against the Fallen Elves meaningless.

It stood ajar, as if waiting for them. As if the one who'd opened it was waiting for them.

Knowing PoH… he is. Even more than Kayaba, this is all a twisted game to him. Kizmel shivered realizing she truly believed the Prince of Hell was even worse than the man who'd created this world, the man who'd played at being her father. He invited us… and this "game" can have only one end.

As one, the three of them began ascending that short staircase. As they went, Kirito took a moment to send a quick message, then whispered, so low only elven ears could hear. "Kizmel… you know what I'm going to do."

"I do." For them all to live, PoH would have to die. Probably by Kirito's hand, though Kizmel intended to do her very best, as well. She also knew it was not the act of killing that troubled her husband so. "I will be there for you, my love. Always."

Even when he took PoH's life… and did not lose sleep over it.

When they reached the door, there was nothing more to be said. No room, no time for hesitation. Together, the three of them grasped the door handle, and pulled its immense weight open.

As the man they had come to slay would say, it truly was showtime.

Author's Note:

Yes, the title is Hollow Finale "I" for a reason. It got so dang big I had to give up and split it in two. Fear not, the second half is almost complete—indeed, the first draft is, I just need to polish the climax a little more. Given that it's the grand finale of the player-generated drama of the Aincrad arc as a whole, it needs to be as close to perfect as I can make it. Shouldn't take more than a couple days.

So… yeah. This is three months after my last update of anything, and it ain't the Rebellion chapter I was supposed to be working on. Suffice to say May was not a good month for writing. After that? I got halfway through the second to last scene of Rebellion Chapter 13, and finally had to throw up my hands and admit it wasn't working out. I'm going to have to rewrite the chapter pretty much from scratch. Long story short, the pacing issues I've been complaining about in my work for some time now finally hit an unacceptable level, and a good chunk of characterization just did not feel right.

I do have a pretty good idea of where to start with the second draft. In the meantime, however, rather than wallow in that, I decided I'd get something productive done. The aforementioned issues, combined with the last few chapters of, well, everything have gone, left me feeling like my writing was in a major slump. Getting to work on the climax of Duet's current arc, I hoped, would give me a bit of self-confidence back. Jury's still out on the outcome, of course, but I have to say this felt a lot smoother than anything I've written since Duet Chapter 32.

For those waiting for the followup to Liminality, let me just say that I expected to write the second story—You Are Not Alone—in about a week. Then a reviewer at FFnet convinced me I needed to expand the scale of it considerably, so… gonna take a bit. But it should be better for it. Even if it means, like Monochrome Duet, the overall project is getting way bigger than I originally planned….

Ahem. About the only other thing I have to say about this chapter specifically is that I regret how I handled Strea. By making her so overwhelming powerful, I wound up with a scene of talking heads until Vanel did her thing, 'cause Kirito and the gang knew fighting her was literally impossible. Oops. Not going to repeat that mistake.

Oh, yeah, minor side note: Grimlock's real name doesn't seem to be known in canon, but since it is canon that he and Griselda use the same first syllable for their player names on purpose, it seemed fitting to establish the same for their real names.

Second side note: "Creepypasta" probably isn't context-appropriate for Japanese players, but that's unfortunately one place where my knowledge of their pop culture falls short.

Hopefully the next chapter will make up for the shortfall with Strea. The climactic battle is a long, energetic one, and it all ends with a reveal I've been just waiting to drop for some time now.

In the meantime… I leave the verdict on this chapter to you guys. Good, bad, die in a fire? Any important details I should include in Chapter 37 that I might not have thought of? Let me know. And I'll see you in a couple days, when that next chapter is posted. -Solid