Sword Art Online Progressive - Volume 01

by Reki Kawahara

  Just over five minutes had passed in the battle against the boss.

  So far, our team was performing well. None of us had suffered the Numbing Impact effects yet, and none had taken heavy damage.

  The four tanks were losing HP with each attack they blocked, of course, but the pace of damage was slow enough that we were making do with just a one-man pot rotation so far.

  And yet, the fact that our battle was going well meant hardly anything.

  The blue-skinned, bull-headed beast that team H faced right now was only Nato the Colonel Taurus, an extra thrown into the boss monster fight...a distraction at worst.

  “Evade! Evaaaade!” came a somewhat panicked scream from the other side of the vast boss chamber. When I had the chance, I glanced over the heads of the dozens of players to see a frightfully large shadow.

  A bristly, crimson red pelt enveloped rippling muscles. His waist was covered with a luxurious golden cloth, but in keeping with taurus tradition, his upper half was bare. The chain dangling over his shoulders was also made of gold. To top it off, the golden battle hammer in his hands shone with a dazzling brilliance.

  Coloring aside, Colonel Nato might as well have been a body double of Baran, but there was one other major difference: size. General Baran, the boss of the second floor, was at least twice the size of Nato.

  Because of the physical height limit of the ceilings in the labyrinths of Aincrad, Baran was not as tall as the mammoth Bullbous Bow that prowled the landscape, but there was no escaping the primal fear inspired by a sixteen-foot beast man. Even the kobold lord from the first floor felt huge, and he was only seven feet tall and change.

  Naturally, General Baran’s golden hammer was massive as well, its powerful head the size of a barrel. When he lifted it, the surface shot golden sparks. The tanks and attackers pulled back as one, in accordance with Lind’s order.

  “Vrruuuuvraaaaa!!”

  Baran’s roar was appropriately twice as fierce as Nato’s, and he smashed the floor. Even at our distance, we could feel the shockwave, which was followed by a burst of sparks. Again, the effective range was twice that of his subordinate. It was Baran’s unique skill, Numbing Detonation.

  The queuing-up motion was very easy to identify, but the blast Radius was so wide that two members failed to get to a safe distance, and their feet were swallowed by the golden sparks. The lightning wrapped around their limbs and demobilized them–the stun effect, one of the most common debuffs of the many in the game, though not one to be overlooked. The stun effect caused by the taurus’s numbing attacks lasted three seconds, and unlike many debuffs, it wore off automatically.

  But while three seconds might not feel long against garden-variety mobs, it was a lifetime against a deadly floor boss. Even at this distance, I was keenly aware of the fear and panic those stunned warriors were feeling.

  One second, two seconds...and just before the third, one of the stunned fighters dropped his short spear to clatter onto the ground. It was a fumble, a secondary debuff that sometimes occurred in the midst of a stun. In the next instant, the soldier was free, and the blue-shirted member of Lind’s group bent over to pick up his weapon.

  “No–”

  Get back, here comes the next one! I wanted to yell, but I held it in. He wouldn’t hear me at this distance, and my companions in team H would confuse it for an order directed at them. After a brief but powerful Slant to Colonel Nato’s ribs, I looked to see General Baran raising his hammer again.

  Thwam! A second Numbing Detonation.

  The hammer struck the same spot as the last one, and more yellow lightning shot forth. Again, they swallowed the spearman attempting to pick up his weapon.

  But while he’d been standing upright last time, he fell down to the floor in this instance. The visual effect that surrounded his avatar was not yellow, but pale green. This was not a stun but a more powerful and dangerous debuff, paralysis.

  It was the true terror of the tauruses’ numbing skills–the second hit in succession would turn the stun to a paralyzing effect.

  Unlike a stun, paralysis did not disappear after a few seconds. It wasn’t indefinite either, but even the weakest effect would last ten minutes...a full 600 seconds. Obviously, no one could survive a battle while prone for that length of time, so healing items were necessary.

  The main methods of recovery were healing potions or purification crystals. The latter were impossible to find until later in the game, so potions were the only choice. However, paralysis left only the dominant hand of the player able to move–and slowly, at that–so even pulling a bottle out of a pouch was a trial. Crawling out of the boss’s attack range was completely out of the question.

  I told them not to pick up their weapons but wait until they were sure the boss wasn’t going to attack twice!

  But there was no use complaining to myself. Besides, picking up a dropped weapon was just human instinct. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d done the same thing and suffered additional hits during the beta. I only learned to deal with that particular challenge with a cool head once I gained the Quick Change mod so that I could call up a replacement from my inventory.

  Baran callously targeted the paralyzed spearman and prepared to stomp him with a massive foot. Fortunately, his party members quickly intervened to pull him out of harm’s way.

  I heaved a sigh of relief, but when I saw where they were taking him, my eyes bulged.

  Lined up along the back wall were already seven or eight players, clutching green potions in their stiff hands and waiting for the effect to wear off. The entire time that we’d been carefully chipping away at Colonel Nato, a large number of the main force was suffering from secondary numbing.

  “Things aren’t going well in the main fight,” Agil rumbled as he returned from his potion rotation.

  I quickly responded, “Yes, but the more they fight, the more they’ll get accustomed to the rhythm. I haven t seen any differences from the beta yet, so I think–”

  We’ll be all right, I was about to finish, but Asuna cut me off with a sobering note.

  “But Kirito, if any more of them get paralyzed...it’ll make a temporary retreat much harder.”

  “...!”

  I tensed and clenched the handle of my Anneal Blade. The weapon wouldn’t fall unless I intentionally dropped it (or an external factor caused me to fumble it), but my subconscious was working in overdrive after witnessing the prior scene with the spearman.

  The boss chambers in Aincrad, at least as far as I’d seen, did not lock the players inside once the battle had begun. If things got hairy, it was always possible to beat a hasty retreat. That didn’t mean it was a simple matter, of course; there was a considerable distance between the battle zone and the door, so if everyone took off running at once, the boss would catch up to us in no time and cause delays, stunning, and ultimately, death.

  So in a way, escaping from the boss chamber required a trickier coordinated effort than actually fighting the adversary. Could we even pull it off, burdened by a large number of paralyzed fighters?

  For one thing, lifting an immobile player in your arms to carry them out required a significant strength value. I couldn’t lift

  Asuna up with my skinny arms when she had passed out in the first-floor labyrinth, so I had had to drag her out using a sleeping bag–an emergency measure still fresh in my memory.

  From what I could see, about four-fifths of Lind and Kibaou’s forces were balanced or speed-first fighters, with only a few pure strength tanks. As Asuna pointed out, if many more players got paralyzed, it would be much harder to disengage.

  “We might need to refocus and prioritize dealing with the numbing,” I said, stepping out of the way of a three-part hammer combo from Nato. Asuna nimbly matched my steps beside me.

  “I agree. But if we start calling out orders for the main force, it’s only going to confuse the chain of command. We need to get our ideas to Lind’s ears.”
<
br />   Her hazel eyes darted over the HP of team H, and then Colonel Nato.

  “We can handle him with just five. Go and talk to Lind, Kirito.”

  “Um...a-are you sure?”

  “Yeah, no problem!” boomed Agil, who must have overheard. “The four of us can handle guarding for now! You’ve easily got two or three minutes to go talk with him!”

  I turned back to look at the chocolate-skinned warrior and his friends, who seemed resolute, and I made up my mind. The key to defeating Baran was to keep his paralysis out of the equation. The battle was holding up for now thanks to our large number and high average level, but if this was the same party that tackled him in the beta, we’d be wiped out by now.

  “All right, just for a bit! I’ll be right back!”

  Before I left, I unleashed a Vertical Arc into Nato’s back as he stood frozen after missing with a big attack, and sped off for my target.

  I shot across the coliseum-styled chamber, more than a hundred yards across, and headed for the main battle in the back. My pasty, skinny real body back home would be lucky to break fourteen seconds in the hundred-meter dash, but the agility-heavy Kirito crossed the space in ten flat. My boot heels screeched to a halt as I lined up next to a blue cape at the rear.

  For a moment, it occurred to me that this was the first time I’d ever been face-to-face with Lind, leader of this raid and former confidant of Diavel the knight.

  Ten days earlier, just after we defeated the previous boss, he’d screamed, Why did you abandon Diavel to die? You knew the moves the boss was using! If you’d told us that information to start with, Diavel wouldn’t have died!

  I hadn’t apologized. I’d met him with a cold smile.

  I’m a beater. Don’t you ever insult my skill by calling me a former tester.

  And having said my piece, I had put on the Coat of Midnight I was still wearing, and left the first-floor boss chamber. I hadn’t interacted with Lind since that very moment.

  So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that when I sidled up next to him, Lind’s first reaction was a grimace of disgust. His narrow eyes went wide, his blade-sharp chin trembled, and his thin lips went even thinner.

  But that manifestation of his true emotions soon sank back beneath his skin. It bothered me that both he and Kibaou were attempting to mask their true feelings about me–though it also wasn’t my business to care about it–but now was not the time to worry about feelings.

  “I ordered you to handle the sub-boss. Why are you–” he growled before I interrupted with the line I’d prepared,

  “Let’s regroup. If any more members get paralyzed, it’s going to make escape nearly impossible.”

  The raid leader looked back at the seven or eight players waiting to recover, then at the state of the fight itself. Following his lead, I checked the HP bar of General Baran. Out of his five bars, they’d lowered the third to the halfway point–we were already half-done with the boss.

  “We’re halfway there. Why would we need to retreat now?”

  I had to admit, there was a part of me that thought it would be a waste to give up now. In the ten minutes since we had started the battle, several people had been paralyzed, but no one’s HP had fallen into the red zone, and the pace of our damage against the boss was better than expected. There was more than a small chance that we could continue to press on, and make it through...But as if seeing through my hesitation, a voice rang out from behind us.

  “How’s about we pull back if one more person gets paralyzed?” I turned around to see Kibaou’s familiar, light-brown spikes of hair. No doubt he was also filled with a powerful disgust at me for being a tried-and-true beta tester, but the look on his face was honest and forthright.

  “Everyone’s got the hang of the numbing range and timing. They’re focused, an’ morale is high. We been poundin’ paralysis and healing potions, so if we stop now, we might not have the supplies ta give it another shot until tomorrow.”

  “...”

  Again, I let my mind race for half a second before reaching a conclusion.

  The most important thing here was not the number of tries or the sum of spent resources but human life. We had to succeed without losing anyone. That was the first rule of any boss battle in Aincrad.

  But Lind and Kibaou already knew that. And if the leader and sub-leader of the raid decided that we could still win, the only thing that a single fighter from an outlying party would do by disagreeing was sabotage the chain of command–obviously, a bad decision. And on top of that, my own instincts were telling me that if we could just maintain our current progress, we could defeat Baran without any casualties.

  “All right, one more. Just be careful when we get down to the last HP gauge,” I said. Kibaou growled in acknowledgment and turned back to his station. Lind nodded silently and resumed his command.

  “Team E, prepare to retreat! Team G, prepare to advance! Switch at the next stagger!” he ordered as I turned back and crossed the coliseum to rejoin team H.

  Asuna wasted no time in asking, “What happened?!”

  “We’ll pull back if one more person gets paralyzed! But at our current pace, we can probably make!”

  “I see...” She briefly looked upset and glanced over at the main battle, but grudgingly agreed with the decision.

  “All right. In that case, let’s finish off this blue guy quick, so we can join the others.”

  “Yeah!”

  Having reached a rapid consensus, we turned back to see that Colonel Nato had just unleashed a massive attack that was expertly blocked by Agil’s group. There was just a bit over one full HP bar left. With perfect precision, we hit the beast with sword skills to either flank.

  That attack brought Nato to his final HP bar, and the blue skinned minotaur bellowed up at the ceiling. He stamped the ground with hooves as big as buckets, then hunched over to expose his horns and tensed like a coiled spring. It was a new pattern to this fight, but not one I’d never seen before.

  “He’s gonna charge! Watch the tail, not the head! He’ll go along that diagonal!”

  Nato turned to his left and charged right for Agil. But the axe-warrior, poised and prepared, easily dodged out of the way and unloaded his double-handed combo, Whirlwind. He stepped back, and Asuna and I switched in to continue the onslaught. The damage was so great that spinning yellow rings appeared over the colonel’s head, and he began to wobble. We’d inflicted our own stun status on him.

  “Now’s our chance! Everyone use two full-power attacks!!”

  “Raaah!!”

  All six of us surrounded the taurus and pummeled him with flashes of light in red, blue, and green. His HP bar lost refreshingly large chunks in quick succession and soon plunged into the yellow zone that signified less than half remained.

  Our full attack a success, we held distance once more, and the taurus’s skin turned purple as he raged even louder. This berserk state before he died was, again, the same as in the beta. His attack speed was half again as fast as before, but with a calm head, this was not an issue.

  On the other side of the chamber, the players let out a roar. I nearly lost my balance for a moment before I realized it was a cry of high spirits. General Baran’s final HP bar had gone yellow as well. Meanwhile, the number of paralyzed along the wall had not risen but had shrunk to five.

  “It’s a good thing there weren’t any surprises since the beta,” Asuna opined to me while we waited for our skills to cool down behind Agil’s protective wall. I looked back to the battle at hand and nodded.

  “Yeah. But if we’d been paying attention against the kobold lord, we’d have noticed that the weapon on his back was a katana, not a talwar. And General Baran hasn’t changed an inch from the beta. So...”

  I suddenly realized that a shadow had passed across Asuna’s face. “What’s wrong?”

  “...Um...nothing. I’m just overthinking things...I was just noticing that it’s weird the first-floor boss w
as a lord, but the second one is only a...”

  Ga-gong!

  A sudden crash interrupted our conversation. We all turned as one to the source of the sound–the center of the coliseum chamber.

  But there was nothing there. Only a series of concentric floor rings made of blackish stone...

  No. It was moving. The three circles of paving stones were sliding, rotating counterclockwise and slowly picking up speed. The stones were rising from the floor before my eyes, elevating into a three-step stage at the center of the room.

  Suddenly, the view of the far wall over the center platform began to waver.

  “Uh-oh...” I grunted. That was the visual effect that signaled a very large object being generated into the map. As I feared, the wavering in the air rapidly spread and began to generate a thick, menacing shadow at the center.

  The shadow soon coalesced into a humanoid form and grew legs thick as tree trunks that thudded heavily onto the stage.

  Sturdy, dark chainmail covered the figure’s waist, but its torso was, as usual, bare. This one had a long, twisted beard that hung down to its stomach. The head was that of a bull, but it had six horns instead of two, and atop the center of its head was a round accessory of silvery platinum–a crown.

  The mammoth figure, so black it might as well have been painted with ink, reared back, and the third and largest of the tauruses let out a roar. Flashes of lightning spread around the minotaur, filling the chamber with blinding light.

  Finally, a six-part HP bar appeared so high in my field of view that it seemed to be stuck to the ceiling. I gazed dully at the letters that appeared.

  Asterios the Taurus King.

  Keep your mind moving! Think! I told myself so hard that if I wasn’t gritting my teeth, I’d have spoken the words aloud.

  It was clear what had just happened. General Baran, whom every player present, including me, had assumed was the second-floor boss, was just as much an opening act as Colonel Nato.

  Baran’s final HP bar turning yellow must have been the trigger to generate the true boss pitch–black King Asterios. But speculation about the origin of the creature was pointless. What mattered was what we did next.