For some reason, it turned into a bit of a pep talk at the end, and I was momentarily afraid that I’d overstepped my bounds.
“Hell yeah! Let’s do this!!” Agil roared, pumping a fist, followed by a chorus of approval from the group.
I silently thanked the man and raised my fist in solidarity.
4:15 PM, December 31, 2022.
The hastily assembled floor boss raid opened the steel doors and set foot inside the labyrinth tower.
10
“SWIIIITCH!!”
Shivata and Liten gave the command in unison from behind their steel shields, blocking the small (though still over six-foot-tall) golem’s three-part punch attack.
They used the force of the punches to leap backward, and Hafner charged between them, his greatsword raised. The thick blade glowed orange, and the system lurched the heavy warrior forward.
The overhead double-handed sword skill Cascade hit the small golem on the forehead, blasting away the remaining third of its HP. It fell apart along the seams of its limbs, and once it was a lifeless hunk of rock, shattered into little blue shards.
“That’s quite some attack power,” Nezha murmured in admiration.
I turned to him and whispered, “True, but he also hit it in the right spot. Did you notice how the golem had a symbol of some kind on its forehead?”
“Ah, right.”
“That’s the weak point of all golems, including the floor boss. Naturally, the boss is way taller, so normal attacks and most sword skills won’t reach it…”
“I see. But this thing will,” Nezha said, holding up the metal circle in his right hand.
“Yeah, the chakram can hit it. Just like with the minotaur king on the second floor, you wait for the right timing, and you’ll be able to cancel the boss’s special.”
“Got it.”
Meanwhile, A-Team finished its post-battle cleanup, and party leader Hafner gave the call to continue onward. I raised a hand in acknowledgment and gave the order to my team—B-Team—to follow.
The two parties had been taking turns fighting monsters, and for being assembled on the spot, the teamwork wasn’t bad. While A-Team could have used the golden pattern of guard/switch/attack, I was more concerned about B-Team, which was stuck repeating attack/switch/attack. But between Agil’s two-handed ax and Wolfgang’s greatsword, they had enough power to knock back our opponents, giving Asuna and me the time to leap in and follow up.
What was most important, however, was the combination work of the two parties. At the larger chambers where we ran into mini-bosses, we tried having A-Team defend and debuff, while B-Team attacked from the sides and rear, but as I feared, there were a few times when B-Team got carried away and earned too much hate, drawing the boss’s aggro away from A-Team. Since the hate statistic was hidden from players, we would just have to consciously hold B-Team back from attacking too much in the big fight ahead.
Until experiencing it for myself, I had no idea how difficult it was to be a raid leader. I understood a bit better Lind’s feelings now, trying to lead his guild with ironclad rules and clear hierarchies. And on the other hand, I could also imagine Kibaou’s desire to raise the feeling of guild solidarity and giving in to the temptation of the guild flag.
Once this mission was over I’d go back to my easy solo—er, duo—life, and never step into a leadership position again, I swore to myself as I walked down the dim hallway. Asuna prodded my arm to get my attention.
“Hmm…?”
“You know, I think it’s getting more like it,” she commented. I looked around and saw that the dungeon itself was indeed changing from its previous design.
The walls were scrawled with mysterious ancient letters and the massive pillars were now carved into stacks of angular golem heads, while the floor and ceiling were made of polished black granite. The increased interior detail was a sign that we were approaching the boss chamber.
I checked my window to see that it was after seven o’clock. Three hours had passed since we entered the dungeon, and considering the number of staircases we’d climbed, it was about time for us to reach the goal.
“Finally at the boss chamber, huh? I should have figured the labyrinth tower wasn’t going to be easy to rush all the way through,” Agil remarked, his hands on the back of his bald head.
I smirked at that. “Actually, the fifth- and sixth-floor towers have fewer rooms and simpler layouts. The tenth-floor labyrinth is insanely huge and complex, and even after three days in the beta, we never made it to the boss chamber.”
“Ugggh…” groaned Agil’s companion, Wolfgang. “So you guys just gave up on gettin’ ahead right there?”
“We didn’t give up, we ran out of time. I think I got the highest of anyone, but I was fighting one of those real bastard Snake Samurai when they announced the end of the beta test and teleported me back to the Town of Beginnings.”
“Whoa, yer kiddin’ about that Snake Samurai business, I hope. I hate snakes,” the macho man grumbled, which drew a giggle from Asuna.
Wolfgang had long, scraggly brown hair down his back and an impressive beard of the same color, which gave him an appearance as lupine as his name. According to him, however, he got the name from a famous American steakhouse. If he raised enough money, he was going to open his own on the cow floor below, so it was no wonder that he got along with Agil the merchant.
“The meat from the giant snakes on the tenth floor is pretty good, so when you open your restaurant, you should put that on the menu.”
“H-hell no! Steaks come from cows, and that’s that! The only thing you’ll find on my menu is perfectly prepared dry-aged beef!”
“Uh, you realize that if you age the beef, it’s gonna lose all its durability and disappear, right?” Agil noted dryly. Argo cackled.
If he was limiting himself to beef, I was going to ask if he considered the tauruses in the second-floor labyrinth to be fair game, until a voice from A-Team, farther ahead, cut me off.
“Hey, look at that!”
I stretched up to see down the dark corridor and caught sight of something that was half what I expected and half not.
In the labyrinths before this point, these creepy corridors always had an eerie set of doors at the end leading to the boss chamber. Yet up ahead were not double doors, but a huge staircase as wide as the hallway. And above, there was a huge, gaping black hole through which the stairs rose. For now, there was no sign of any monsters in the corridor or on the staircase.
“Proceed with caution!” I warned, and Hafner responded in the affirmative. A-Team stayed up front, and we watched the sides and rear as we walked forward for half a minute.
A-Team stopped before the staircase, and when I caught up to them, I slipped through to stand at the head of the entire group.
“There are no gaps to the side,” I noted.
At my left, Hafner said, “Meaning we’ll just have to climb up. Our coordinates put us right about in the center of the tower.”
“Hmmm…But will there be another hallway and then the door up there, or will it just be the boss chamber?”
“It wasn’t like this in the beta?” Shivata asked from the rear. I turned around to speak.
“Nope. Before there was just another normal set of doors, then the chamber with the golem. But pretty much everything’s been changed in one way or the other, so there might not be a grand meaning to the addition of this staircase…”
I looked ahead again, staring into the square of darkness at the top of the stairs, but I couldn’t make anything out. No sooner had the thought of throwing a torch up there occurred to me than Argo passed me on the right, carrying a light.
“Guess we just gotta peer inside.”
“R-right…Well, assuming that goes straight into the boss chamber up there, I’m going to go up alone to scout it first.”
I turned back to give a formal command to the rest of the group, but Argo intervened, looking deadly serious.
“Hang on. Leave thi
s to me.”
“Huh…?”
“This staircase is worrisome. Could be a trap, where the stairs rise up from the floor to seal the exit. If it happens, I’m quick enough to slip out before it closes.”
She kicked the stone step with the toe of her shoe. At that point, I noticed that even the side of the steps had those ancient letters carved into them, which made her suggestion seem all the more likely.
But I’d already forced Argo to do solo reconnaissance on the boss of the catacombs. Just because she came out fine that time didn’t mean everything would go smoothly again.
“…Let’s go together, then. I’m not backing down on this.”
“Whaaat?”
“Don’t give me that look! I may not be as fast as you, but I’m still a speed type. I’m capable of escaping, too, if the stairs start to move, you know.”
“Sheesh! Fine, fine,” Argo accepted, pouting. I gave the order for the others to watch our backs.
Asuna came forward and whispered, “Be careful.” I reassured her that I would be fine and be back soon.
I put my foot on the very bottom step and began to climb the massive staircase carefully, after Argo. The darkness up ahead grew closer, bit by bit.
Eventually the stairs met the ceiling of the hallway and continued onward. It meant that the layer of rock separating the floor where the rest of the group waited and the floor above was extremely thick. The only source of light was Argo’s lantern, and although it was brighter than a torch, the thick darkness rebuffed its prying light.
Once we had climbed over fifteen feet from the hole’s entrance, I noticed a shift in the temperature. A heavy chill was washing over me from above. That was the air of a boss chamber.
“Argo,” I called. The informant nodded, still looking ahead. Three, four, five steps later, the material under our feet changed.
The hobnails on the soles of my boots hit a hard, smooth surface, producing a sharp ringing. Immediately, there was an eerie vmmm vibration, and a number of lights sprang into being in the distance.
The pale lights, which looked like LED bulbs, cast away the darkness. When I saw what the light revealed, I gasped.
It was vast.
The circular chamber had to be a hundred feet across and fifty feet tall. That meant the entire top portion of the labyrinth tower was taken up by this one boss chamber. The curved walls had to be the very walls of the tower itself, and the ceiling would be the bottom of the sixth floor above.
But that left one question.
“…Wait…there’s no staircase going up,” I muttered, and Argo nodded as she put away the lantern. She cast a thorough glance around the chamber and said nervously, “There’s no sign of a boss, either…”
It was my turn to nod. Until this point, the sequence was always: enter chamber, lights go on, floor boss appears. But even though we had moved from the staircase out onto the floor, there was no polygon block phasing into existence.
The floor and ceiling were flat and smooth, gleaming like black crystal, with fine lines crisscrossing here and there like electric circuits. I crouched down to touch one of the grooves, but nothing happened.
“You don’t think…the ALS already beat it, do you…?”
“Not a chance. When we left Mananarena, we confirmed they were still in town. They’ve prob’ly left by now, but we got a good three-hour lead on ’em,” Argo pointed out, inching forward.
“W-wait…”
“I don’t think the boss’ll pop unless we move a bit farther…You wait next to the stairs, Kii-boy,” she said, proceeding cautiously.
I peered ahead of her, where thirty feet away there was a spot where the lines on the floor came together in a complex concentric pattern. It looked likely to do something, but that only made me more nervous. Argo knew it, too, though. I just had to stand here and watch her.
The information broker glided slowly, smoothly over the black surface, lit by the pale bulbs and, after a deep breath, stepped into the circle.
One…two…three…
Between the fourth and fifth second, a number of things happened at once.
The lines on the floor glowed, and an instantaneous, fierce vibration rumbled the entire room. I shouted Argo’s name, but she was already preparing to leap away from the spot.
If she attempted the same thing a hundred times, she would have succeeded at evading ninety-nine of those times.
But in Aincrad, all outcomes were the result of system calculations that only appeared to be random. If the system decided it would be so, the player’s will could not override that outcome.
The momentary vibration threw Argo off-balance, and she toppled into the circle.
The next moment, five square pillars burst up out of the ground in a pattern around her.
There were three long pillars. One shorter pillar. And one shorter still. The pattern…the layout.
They weren’t just pillars. They were fingers. It was a giant hand.
“Argooo!!” I screamed, racing forward. She tried to stand up to escape the fingers, but a tumble in this world wasn’t just a lack of balance, but a system-recognized negative status. She would be under a brief stun effect after falling and couldn’t move until it wore off.
The black fingers, covered in glowing blue lines, started to close around the girl. I crouched, ready to pounce between them and rescue her…
“Stay back, Kii-boy!!”
It was a sharp command the likes of which I’d never heard from her. Argo’s right hand flashed from her spot sprawled on the floor. Something flew by and grazed my left cheek—the pick she always had equipped at her side. My avatar’s legs disobeyed my command and froze for just a brief instant.
With a deep, explosive rumble, the black hand trapping Argo began to stretch upward from the floor.
Up in the air, the five fingers clenched shut, tightly.
Through the cracks in the pitch-black fist, I heard a faint bursting sound and witnessed a glittering cloud of blue particles.
If I hadn’t tasted that same fear in the catacombs two days earlier, I might have been truly too late this time.
When I had seen the one cloaked man holding the Chivalric Rapier +5, I lost all my cool. Just the image of her being PKed took over my mind altogether. I simply didn’t think to check her HP bar in my party readout, but even after I did, I nearly convinced myself that it was just a delayed reaction from the game system. To my good fortune, her shout drew monsters that forced Morte and his friend to flee—but if I’d maintained my wits, I could have come up with a smarter plan.
I couldn’t make the same mistake this time.
I tore my gaze away from the floating lights in the air and checked the bottommost of the six HP bars on the upper left corner of my vision. It had taken about 10 percent damage, but the bar was still intact. The crushing effect I saw was not Argo herself, but her equipment.
It was too early to be relieved, though. Argo’s HP was slowly but surely dropping. She needed to be freed from the huge fist as soon as possible.
“Rrrah!”
I drew the Sword of Eventide from over my shoulder and slammed it against the black arm stretching up thirty feet from the floor. The collision produced an earsplitting blast, a shower of sparks, and a nasty vibration running from my wrist to my shoulder. A red damage line ran down the smoky quartz surface, but promptly vanished. The fist above did not open.
I held my sword to my left side to initiate a sword skill, trying to contain my rising panic. The light blue glow flashed back and forth at high speed before my eyes, creating a larger impact than the last.
The two-part Horizontal Arc got a clear reaction from the fist this time. A bellow like thunder erupted above, the arm pulled down toward the floor, and the fist opened.
A small shadow darted forth from the palm hovering twenty-five feet above, hurtling into a spin and landing next to me. It did a backflip away from the scene, and I took distance myself from the massive arm.
As
the arm sank down into the floor with a smaller rumble than when it appeared, I heard Argo comment blithely, “Whew! That startled me.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” I quipped, but in truth I was relieved. Argo ended up suffering only 15 percent damage, but her trademark hooded cloak was gone, and the leather armor below was in terrible condition. The bursting effect I’d seen was from the cloak.
“I think we should go back—”
“Below,” I was going to say, but Argo cut me off.
“Kii-boy, down there!”
“…?!”
The light circuits running along the floor were undergoing a dizzying transformation. The blue lines were gathering around my feet, forming a number of concentric circles…
“Nwaah!”
Argo and I jumped away, immediately before the enormous black arm burst from the floor again, clenching its fist audibly in the air.
It was a close call, but at least we’d identified one of its patterns. As long as we paid close attention to the lines, we wouldn’t get snagged like that…
“Below, below!!” Argo shouted again.
“…?!”
I looked down to see that the concentric circles were forming again, despite the arm already being in place elsewhere.
“Mwah—!”
Another jump. A second arm erupted, just barely grazing the toe of my boot, and clenched another fistful of air.
“What? There are two?!”
“Most people have two arms, Kii-boy,” Argo remarked rather calmly, given that she nearly died less than a minute earlier. “Look at how the thumb is in a different spot. That’s a right and left hand.”
“Oh…yeah, now that you mention it…”
Indeed, the way the two arms were placed, they looked like a giant stretching up through the floor.
That meant the grabbing attacks were done with for now. The down staircase was a good distance away across the chamber, and I started to head for it when I got a bad premonition and looked up. Those blue lines had been forming on the ceiling earlier, just as they had on the floor…
Sword Art Online Progressive 4 Page 19
