Sword Art Online - Volume 8 - Early and Late

by Reki Kawahara

  With the enormous body and the crown on its forehead, along with the speech just now, this guy was the «Frost Giant King Þrym», no doubt about it.

  It was Klein who faced and replied to the great giant, who was an AI like Urth and Freyja.

  “……Heh, a warrior just needs to eat, sleep, and laugh! Don’t bother trying to tame us with a cheap invitation like that!”

  While we made subtle expressions of relief from behind, as in front of us, Klein pulled his beloved katana from its scabbard.

  With that signal, the rest of us took out our weapons as well.

  They might not be the legendary class equipments, but all of them either carried the name of ancient class weapons, or were carved to a satisfactory level by the master smith Lisbeth. However, the daring smile under the long moustache of the Giant King Þrym didn’t fade due to the light from our weapons. Maybe it was natural, as our weapons to him were just slightly longer than toothpicks to him anyway.

  The shining phosphorescence from the dark eye sockets glared at us from a very high place, the glance stopped at the eight person who stood there unarmed.

  “……Ho, ho. Isn’t that Freyja-dono? Leaving the cage and coming here, does that mean you have already decided to become my bride, hmm?”

  Klein suddenly turned around and yelled in a hoarse voice,

  “B-Bride!?”

  “Yes. That woman agreed to be my bride and came to the marriage in this castle. But on the eve before the banquet I caught her with the key to my treasury. So I put her in jail as punishment, hu, hu.”

  ——The situation became complicated, I tried to rearrange the thoughts in my brain.

  The golden haired beauty, whose name was Freyja, had said “in order to reclaim the stolen tribe’s treasure, had crept into this castle.” a while ago. But thinking about it clearly, the castle Þrymheimr floating in midair had no windows and only had one entrance. So she decided to agree to a fake marriage to enter the castle without difficulty, then intruded into the throne room during the night to recover the treasure. But she was caught by the gate guardian and was chained up in prison as the result —— that kind of setting?

  If that was the truth, then the possibility of being attacked by her from behind was low. But now the overall plot still couldn’t be pinned together. The quest’s sub-route was still confusing. First of all, of the nine fairy races of Alfheim, which one was Freyja’s «tribe»? And what was her stolen treasure?

  Those kind of things should have been asked when she joined the party, but now there was no longer any time; while I was thinking about that, Lyfa, who was my left wing vanguard, pulled my sleeve and whispered,

  “Hey, Onii-chan. I somehow feel like I read this somewhere…… Þrym and Freyja…… The stolen treasure…… it was, hmmm, I’m certain……”

  But before Lyfa could finish, Freyja-san shouted with resolution from behind,

  “Who would become your wife! Together with these swordsmen, we’ll defeat you and take back the treasure you stole!”

  “Nu, hu, hu, those are strong words. As expected from Freyja-dono whose beauty and bravery is heard of even at the end of the nine worlds. However, snapping the noble flower would give me great pleasure…… after smashing these small bugs, I’ll love you deliberately, nuhuhuhuhu……”

  As Þrym patted his moustache with his massive hand while issuing his speech, I doubted if this was really the plot written by the automatic quest generator, as the speech was really testing the limits permitted in a game for all ages.

  All the girls in the battle formation made similar frowning expressions, as Klein stood in front, clenching his left fist as he shouted,

  “Y-Y-You bastard! Watch your mouth! This Klein-sama will never let you lay a finger on Freyja-san!!”

  “OuOu, I hear a sound of buzzing wings. Well, I’ll just subjugate you bugs first, as an advance celebration for the entire Jötunheimr becoming mine……”

  Thump, the giant king suddenly stepped forward, its large HP gauge appeared on the upper right of my field of vision. Moreover, it was stacked three layers. Cutting that off would be very troublesome.

  As the HP gauge of those evil floor bosses in the new Aincrad were invisible in order to frustrate the player’s mind, compared to those bosses, this battle’s pace would be much easier to grasp.

  “——Come! Listen to Yui’s instructions and focus on avoiding at the start!”

  Immediately after my shout, Þrym raised his huge rock-like right fist high up near the ceiling —— a blue frost storm wrapped its fist, then furiously swung down.

  The last battle in Þrymheimr castle —— but probably —— was as expected, a large and fierce battle I had never experienced.

  The King Þrym’s early attack patterns were punches from both fists, three continuous stomping using the right foot, an ice breath in a straight line, and twelve ice Dwarf soldiers from the floor.

  The most troublesome was the creation of the Dwarves, which was taken care of from the back of the party by Sinon’s bow, cleaning them up in the blink of an eye by piercing their weak points with marvellous accuracy. The rest of the attacks were avoidable after observing its timing once, the counts from Yui also helped the three in the front row continue avoiding direct hits.

  Once the defense was in place, it was finally the time to attack, however, this was certainly the hard part. As I had feared, our swords could only reach Þrym’s shins, and the thick fur protecting that area had high physical resistance, like the gold Minotaur. I took a small chance to attack it with a three hit sword skill, risking my HP to do so, but a low delay skill also had low attribute damage. The result was an unpleasant response, like hitting an indestructible object.

  A great reassurance in this battle situation was the thunder magic attacks from Freyja-san. This, along with Klein’s full force’s “Mengo!”. With the cooperation from the NPC and an occasional purple shower of lightning from behind, Þrym’s HP was certainly shaved off.

  We fought hard in the battle for ten minutes before the first HP gauge finally depleted, causing the giant king to make an overpowered roar.

  “Pattern changed! Be careful!”

  As I shouted, Lyfa who was next to me said in a nervous voice,

  “This is bad, Onii-chan. Only three lights remain in the medallion. We may have fifteen minutes left.”

  “…………”

  Þrym had three HP gauges. However, we took more than ten minutes to deplete one gauge. It could be said that cutting the remaining two gauges within fifteen minutes would be very difficult.

  But, for this opponent, the «Skill Connect» wouldn’t work like it did when we were fighting the gold Minotaur. During monster delay —— or to say the delay occurring after its attack, «striking the weak point to create heavy concentrated damage» was needed. However, Þrym was weak to neither sword nor magic, so even if the sword skill connected four times, it wouldn’t be able to make much change to that amount of HP.

  As if seeing the moment of my impatience——

  Þrym suddenly inhaled a large amount of the air, inflating his chest like a bellows.

  An overpowering wind occurred, sucking in the five people in the front and mid rows. It’s bad, this is surely the harbinger of a full force wide area attack. For evading, first of all, the sucking power of the wind magic must be neutralized. While I was thinking this, to my left, Lyfa started reciting a spell.

  But, there was probably not enough time once I noticed the enemy motion.

  “Lyfa, everyone, take defense!”

  At my call, Lyfa suspended the spell, crossed her arms in front and bent her body. All members took the same posture, in that moment,

  From Þrym’s mouth, which had sent out a breath in a straight line many times up until this point, released a wide conal diamond dust.

  The shining pale wind wrapped around us. The cold which penetrated Asuna’s buff made it feel like our skin was being torn off. Gin, gin, with a sharp sound, the avatars
of five people froze at once. I tried to escape, but the thick shell of the ice completely locked my movements. Lyfa, Klein, Lis, Silica with Pina being hugged tightly to her chest, and I turned into blue ice sculptures.

  At the moment, our HP gauge still haven’t decreased. But we couldn’t feel at ease. As this kind of special skill would increase the damage taken in direct proportion to the time being suspended.

  Þrym approached, then lifted up his massive right leg. Bad, pinch, danger. —— as I screamed in my mind, at almost the same time,

  “Nuuu―!”

  With a thick roar, Þrym stomped furiously on the floor. The violent shock wave from it swallowed us while we were still frozen——

  Gaching! the frightening sound of breaking echoed throughout the hall, those of us covered in ice shattered. My eyes went dark due to shock. My body slammed hard on the floor while the damage effect light continued on.

  At the edge of my vision, the top five of eight HP gauges suddenly turned to a deep red.

  While the five vanguards got caught in Þrym’s large-scaled ranged attack, of course the three people in the back row weren’t just watching.

  Our HP gauges were taken by nearly eighty percent when suddenly, a soft blue light rained down on us, healing our wounds. It was Asuna’s high ranked full recovery spell. The timing was perfect, which would be impossible to achieve without anticipating the occurrence of the damage and pre-casting the spell in advance.

  However, in this game’s large-scaled recovery magics, most of them were of the «Heal over Time» type, which didn’t recovery all the lost HP instantly. So it’d be fatal if we were attacked again while our HP was still recovering.

  Þrym stepped forward in order to deliver the final blow to us who finally stood up. The long beard that hung over its throat —— was suddenly pierced by a rapid succession of fire arrows blazing bright red, causing a big explosion. It was Sinon’s two-handed long bow sword skill «Explode Arrow». With ten percent physical, and ninety percent flame damage property striking the frost giant tribe’s weak point, his HP gauge clearly decreased.

  “Munuuuun!”

  Þrym raised an angry voice and changed his direction to target Sinon. The flashy attack on the enemy’s weak point from the back row’s damage dealers caused a massive amount of hate, taking over the hate of the vanguards, resulting in the enemy switching target was a mistake beginners always did; but of course, this wasn’t the case this time. Sinon acted as a decoy, knowing it would likely lead to her death, to buy us time for recovery.

  “Sinon, give me thirty seconds!”

  While shouting, I gulped down a recovery potion from my pouch. Next to me, the others also poured similar red liquids down their mouths. Pina, Silica’s partner, seemed to have narrowly survived because of its master’s guard skill. In this world, unlike Aincrad, there was a pet resurrection spell, but taking time to do so during a battle would be very difficult.

  My vision switched between the irritatingly slowly increasing HP gauge, and the blue Cait Sith’s continuing to avoid Þrym’s fierce attacks. Even though Sinon had come to ALO not long ago, her body control was spectacular. In GGO, as a sniper who forfeited all defensive skills, running away was the only way if an attacker type approached, that experience was probably still with her now.

  “……Prepare the attack.”

  Removing my eyes off the HP gauge, which had finally came back up to eighty percent, I called my companions. Re-gripping both of my swords, I began to start counting, in that instant——

  “Swordsman-sama.”

  The sudden voice came from my side, I frighteningly turned my eyes.

  Standing right beside me, was the person who was with Asuna just a moment ago, the eight party member —— Freyja.

  The mysterious auburn pupils stared at me, and the AI-based NPC said,

  “At this rate, defeating Þrym is not possible. My wish is but one, buried somewhere in this room, just my tribe’s treasure. With that returned, I’d regain my true power, and with that, be able to dismiss Þrym.”

  “……T-True power……”

  I spent a short moment lost in thought.

  Then I reached my decision. This wasn’t the first time I feared Freyja-san regaining her full power and then assisting Þrym in attacking us. Also, if this endurance battle dragged on, the probability of quest failure due to insufficient time was high, which would lead to the catastrophe. In that case, I must lean on the remaining possibility.

  “Understood. What kind of treasure?”

  I quickly asked the NPC, and Freyja then spread her hands about thirty centimeters wide.

  “It’s about this big, a golden hammer.”

  “……Hah? H-Hammer?”

  “Yes, hammer.”

  I stared to Freyja’s face who had just returned the same answer, confused for half a second. At that time, Sinon, who was driven to the rear right wall of the throne room, took splash damage from Þrym’s attack, losing nearly twenty percent of her HP. Not being able to stand letting her to be the only target any more, I quickly said to Klein and Lyfa,

  “You go ahead to help her! I’ll follow soon!”

  “Roger!”

  The katana user shouted the single word and bolted out while raising a war cry. While listening to the sound effect of the group battle which shortly began, I looked around the vast throne room.

  The bunch of shining gold objects were piled high up along the blue ice wall’s edge. How can I search for a single hammer among them? Certainly this might be the standard «searching for item» type of quest, but wasn’t the difficulty too high!?

  Perhaps this quest was supposed to be taken by a raid party of thirty people. Without that much manpower, searching for a single item from this mountain of treasures seemed impossible.

  “……Yui.”

  With the feeling of wanting to rely on the Navigation Pixie on my head, I called her, to which she shook her head to the side in reply,

  “Can’t, Papa. There is no location of the key item in the map data. It was probably randomly placed in the room once we entered. It seems that to discover the location of the item in question and hand it to Freyja-san is the key objective.”

  “Is that so……uu……~~n……!”

  I concentrated thinking so hard that smoke would have emitted out of my ears, but this time there was no idea coming out. Was there nothing but to bet on the one in ten thousands chance by digging from a nearby mountain of treasures?

  At that time, Lyfa who struggled in the battle nearby looked at me for a moment and shouted,

  “Onii-chan! Use a thunder type skill!”

  “T-Thunder……?”

  My eyes widened in shock for a moment, but the next moment, I swung the sword in my right hand.

  For me, who learned only the basic illusion spells, there was only one way to produce damage with thunder property.

  “……Seyaaa!”

  With a shout, I kicked the ground at full force and jumped. With a mid-air forward somersault, at the same time changing my grip on the sword to a backhand and thrusting my body downward. It was one of the few heavy ranged attacks in one-handed sword category, «Lightning Fall». Thirty percent physical and seventy percent thunder.

  With the roar of dry thunder, the sword stabbed into the floor. From the center, blue-purple sparks shot out in all direction. I then lifted my body and quickly turned around, my glance was at the group of surrounding objects which had been mowed down——

  “…………!”

  I saw it. Deep within the mountain of gold, a purple light blinked briefly in response to the thunder I created. Clenching my teeth, I dashed to the upper left corner of the room. While looking at the huge chair on my right, which should be Þrym’s throne, I made a bodily dive into the mountain of treasure, discarding and throwing away the objects which would be very expensive——

  “……Is this it!?”

  Several seconds later, rolled out in front of my eyes, I stre
tched my hand to grab the meager item. It was a small hammer with thin golden handle and a bejewelled platinum head. As I grabbed and lifted it up, I could feel its frightening weight which could easily cause my avatar to sink into the ground. I put more force to lift it, turned around and shouted,

  “Freyja-san, here!”

  Then, due to a little impatience, I made a long throw using the built up momentum. I wouldn’t be able to complain if this deed raised the NPC attack flag. Fortunately, the golden haired beauty caught the extremely heavy hammer I threw at her splendidly with her thin and slender right hand.

  But immediately, her body curled as if being affected by the added weight. The long wavy hair flowed, and her exposed white back trembled slightly.

  ……Eh, maybe it was the wrong item? Did I somehow pass something bad to her?

  I started feeling impatient again —— then I heard Freyja-san’s low whisper,

  “…………flowing…………”

  Pari, a thin spark appeared in the air.

  “……verflowing……it’s overflowing…………”

  Somehow the odd speech seemed to match a beautiful witch more. Was it an error in the Cardinal’s language engine module? But even so, the voice seemed strange. The sleek and husky voice up until now changed to hoarse and low cracking voice.

  PariPari, the sparks became increasingly violent. The golden brown hair floated up softly, and the edges of the thin pure white dress fluttered vigorously.

  “Over……flowingggooooOOOOOOOOO————!”

  The third shout that gushed out was completely unlike the previous Freyja-san. The bad feeling was like it came from a different dimension, in front of my widened eyes —— the muscle of the beautiful pure white limbs and back rose up like ropes. At the same time, the white dress was torn off into pieces and disappeared.

  In that moment, Klein who was fighting behind the hall turned around by the activation of his secret skill «hyper sense». His eyes began open wide at the stark naked body of Freyja-san. But the next moment, his jaw dropped.