Step on the line when it stopped, evade the onrushing limb, then hit it with sword skills. When the boss started its debuff roar, Nezha would cancel it with the chakram. Our hastily assembled raid party carried out the pattern admirably and was executing it safely by the third attempt. With both arms and legs being hit by simultaneous sword skills, the damage inflicted was hefty, and it took us less than ten minutes to wipe out the first HP bar, then the second, then the third.
Our plan prior to the battle was to pull back when the boss switched to a new HP bar, in case the attack patterns changed, but even into the fourth bar, more than halfway through, there was no alteration. It was unlikely to stay that way until the end, but we could probably get through one more before the shift.
Just as I was executing another Vertical Arc (having lost count of how many times I’d done it already) I heard Nezha shout with panic.
“Kirito! The wall!!”
I spun around. The blue lines from the floor and ceiling were stretching out onto the previously flat, plain walls. The two sides moved toward each other like some kind of prehistoric creature, filling in the blank space.
Like the bars of a cell.
“Retreat down the stairs! A-Team first, then B-Team!” I ordered spontaneously. If we left the boss chamber and it lost its aggro state, all the HP we’d worked to reduce would heal very quickly, but it was dangerous to go too deep when you didn’t know what was ahead. We only needed one person to see the new attack patterns for himself, and I would serve that role.
“But—!” Hafner protested, and Shivata tugged silently on his cloak. The heavy warrior gave in reluctantly and ran for the stairs in the center of the room.
SAO was a cruel, cold game of death, but there were certain ways in which it maintained a minimum of fair play.
One was that there was always an escape route from a boss chamber. In most of the MMOs I’d played before this, the arena was inescapable once the boss fight started, but SAO was different. The water battle against the hippocampus on the fourth floor did have closing doors while the submerging attack was active, but it was still easily openable from outside.
So I believed that the fifth floor would naturally hold true to that pattern.
“Kirito!” Asuna shrieked, pointing to the ceiling.
I looked up to see that the giant face, which had been stuck to the ceiling since it appeared, was now gone. The three HP bars were still there, so we hadn’t defeated it yet; the lines on the floor, ceiling, and now walls were still moving restlessly.
So where did the face go?
I looked all over the vast ceiling, feeling a sense of eerie foreboding stealing over me.
Then I heard Liten’s helmet-filtered metallic voice cry out, “No, Shiba!!”
My eyes were sucked right toward the direction of the stairs.
In the center of the room, where the staircase had been just seconds before, the boss’s face was bulging from the ground, and sunk up to his waist inside of the gigantic mouth was Shivata.
But why—why would it be there? Where did the staircase go?!
I was frozen in place, my breath held, when Hafner turned to me in the process of pulling Shivata from the boss’s mouth.
“The stairs…turned into its mouth!!” he shouted. It took a brief moment for understanding to pierce my brain.
The boss’s face disappeared from the ceiling and appeared in the floor. That was fine. But if the down staircase, our only means out of the chamber, turned into the boss’s mouth, then nobody could escape the chamber.
No—more important now was rescuing Shivata. His heavy armor was bleeding red damage effects from the boss’s black teeth, each one as big around as Mananarena’s massive roll cakes. He hadn’t lost any HP yet, but it was easy to imagine that if his armor broke, he’d suffer fatal damage on the spot.
“Dammit, not again!” Shivata hissed as he tried to pry open the boss’s mouth—he’d already suffered the clutching attack earlier. Liten was helping him, but the enormous jaw was not opening in the least. On the other side of the face, Agil was repeatedly slamming his double-handed ax against the weak point on its forehead, but unlike when a single chakram strike could knock it back on the ceiling, it was easily repelling the heavy blade now.
Perhaps, like with the arms and legs, sword skills were necessary to affect it, but given that Shivata was trapped in its mouth now, he was hesitant to attempt them.
I wanted to rush over and help, but the lines were still moving on the floor. Hafner and Liten were too busy with Shivata to bother avoiding the lines, so if necessary, me, Asuna, and Argo would need to stomp on them to draw the limb attacks away.
“Damn…what’s the deal with this boss and all the appearing and disappearing?!” I growled under my breath.
Nearby, Asuna rasped, “So that’s what they meant by Vacant Colossus…”
She had figured something out about the boss’s name. I glanced over at her, and she continued, “Vacant meaning empty, and colossus meaning giant statue…I think it’s referring to the entire chamber. This room is the boss of the fifth floor.”
“…!!”
I was speechless. I looked out at the entire room, the floor, ceiling, and walls writhing with organic glowing lines. If Asuna was correct, the twelve of us were trapped inside the empty interior of Fuscus the Colossus. If the whole space was part of the boss’s body, then of course it could produce arms and legs wherever it wanted or change the stairs into a mouth.
“I don’t care if it’s a magical golem, this is crazy!” I wailed.
Meanwhile, Shivata screamed, “It’s no good! I can’t get loose!”
Hafner and Liten tried to offer encouragement, but there was fear in their voices as well.
“Don’t give up, Shivata!!”
“We’re going to save you now, Shiba!!”
“It’s no use…my armor’s going to break! Licchan, let go of its mouth!” Shivata cried, a remarkable act of willpower. But Liten only shook her head.
“No!! I’m…I’m going to save you!!”
That was right. We couldn’t give up now. Shivata was nearly at full HP still, so even if he got hit by some sword skill damage, it wouldn’t kill him outright.
My mind was made up. “Agil! Attack the forehead sigil with a sword skill!” I ordered.
But the burly fellow’s bald head shook back and forth.
“I can’t…there’s no sigil anymore!!”
“Wha…?”
My mind was shocked into a blank state yet again, until the metal screech of Shivata’s armor being damaged broke through it.
If he died here, the other members would be petrified, and we’d be reduced to running around from Fuscus’s unfair attacks helplessly. And since the stairs were gone, there was no escape anymore. The entire raid party could be wiped out.
Is this it?
My unsteady eyes traveled over to lock on to the profile of Asuna’s pale, frightened face.
The same face I’d been looking at on the spiral staircase up to this floor, when I promised that I would protect her until she didn’t need me anymore.
Perhaps I never had the right to make such a promise in the first place. From the moment I abandoned my only friend in this game of death, right at its start, my path had been set in stone. I was meant to wander its wastes alone, without a goal.
Was this my punishment, meted out by a digital god? My just desserts for not only seeking a partner to protect, but also leading a group into battle against a boss…?
At my feet, the blue lines that served as Fuscus’s nerves slowed their movement.
In the distance, Shivata’s armor cracked, spilling bright red damage effects.
The Sword of Eventide suddenly went heavy in my right hand.
Right at the moment of despair, when every player present might have thought all was lost—
“I won’t let you…kill Shibaaaaaaa!!” Liten roared ferociously, and launched into a totally unexpected plan.
&nbs
p; The steel-covered heavy warrior jumped onto Fuscus’s square jaw and thrust herself without hesitation into the mouth with Shivata inside. His Iron Mail burst into a cloud of little blue shards. The lines of teeth plunged cruelly toward the swordsman’s torso, but when they hit Liten’s steel plate, they crunched, sending up sparks and stopping still again.
“Wha—! Licchan, why would you do that?!” Shivata demanded, grabbing his partner’s shoulder.
As she pushed against the golem’s mouth with both hands, she said, “B-because I’m a tank! It’s my job to protect others!!”
Fifty feet away, those words struck my numbed brain like a hammer.
Aside from Argo and Nezha, Liten was the last member to join the raid party, and she was fulfilling her role more bravely and admirably than anyone. I wasn’t even directly exposed to danger, and I was ready to give up.
Liten’s job was to protect.
My job now was to think.
Think. Think until every last brain cell burns into ash.
Fuscus’s weak point…Where did the forehead symbol go? It couldn’t have just vanished. If he was a golem, then there had to be a symbol or letter carved somewhere on his body, as the Hebrew legend suggested.
Fuscus’s face vanished from the ceiling and appeared in the floor. That meant that most likely, the symbol had moved from its forehead to some other location. Somewhere on the floor, walls, or ceiling? No, there was a place more likely than those.
I squeezed my weapon’s handle and shouted toward the group at the center of the chamber, “Do whatever you can to avoid the lines, guys! If you can’t help it, then climb up on the boss’s face!”
They looked toward me in surprise, then nodded. Hafner, Naijan, and Okotan, all heavily armored, clambered onto the boss’s cheeks and forehead, while Agil, Wolfgang, and Lowbacca spread apart to focus on the floor.
Next, I issued commands to my companions nearby.
“Asuna, Argo, Nezha! Step on the lines to bring out the arms and legs! That symbol has to be on one of them! If you find it, we’ll all attack!”
“Got it!”
“You bet!”
“I’ll try!”
All three of them crouched in preparation. As the lines slowed down, they seemed to react briefly as they crossed beneath each foot. There was no need to avoid them this time, but the evasion would be easier if the target circle appeared in front. I rebalanced my feet and, the instant the lines stopped, used my left leg to step on the one directly in front of me.
Immediately the blue lines swirled into a concentric pattern beneath my boot. I leaped back.
It was Fuscus’s left arm that shot up toward me, his right arm at Argo, his left leg at Asuna, and his right leg at Nezha, all at about the same moment.
I swung around the arm, searching frantically, but there was no symbol. I didn’t hear any of the others shout about it. If I was wrong about this, we were going to lose both Shivata and Liten.
It had to be there. It had to…it had to!
“I found iiiiit!”
The panicked, lilting scream came from Nezha, twenty feet away near the wall. I spun to see the chakram user pointing at the back of the left leg’s blocky knee. But he had been so focused on looking for the symbol that he wasn’t able to evade the shock wave after the stomp—he had toppled to the floor and couldn’t get up.
The attack finished, the leg began rumbling back up toward the ceiling. The back of the knee was twelve feet off the ground—about as high as I could reach, but I had no other choice.
“You’re not getting away!” I shouted, racing toward it. I held out my sword as I ran, preparing Sonic Leap, the longest-distance jumping sword skill at my disposal…
“Duck, Kii-boy!!” came a shout from right behind me, and I instinctually crouched.
The next moment, something slammed onto my right shoulder. I just barely managed to stay on my feet, looking up to see the leaping silhouette that had just used me as a launching pad. Even with every last point put into agility, her air was nothing short of stunning.
When Argo the Rat hit the peak of her jump, the claw on her right hand glowed purple. The system acceleration sped her up, tiny body flipping as it hurtled forward like a cannonball. If I recalled correctly, that was the claw-type charging skill, Acute Vault.
At odds with Argo’s epithet, she shot forward with carnivorous, feline ferocity, digging deep into the back of the left knee. When three diagonal damage lines covered the blue symbol, I heard a deep roar like subwoofer feedback from the rear.
I turned around, boot soles sliding, to see Fuscus’s face protruding from the floor, mouth agape in a howl. Shivata and Liten popped right out of the mouth, pushed by the sheer pressure of the sound, and fell to the ground together.
Liten’s plate armor had ugly-looking damage spots on it, but hadn’t broken entirely. As long as it didn’t fall apart, it could be repaired.
Fuscus’s face sank into the ground, mouth still wide, and disappeared. Like before, the descending stairs were left behind.
After a brief pause, the players present raised a cheer in unison. Hafner leaped onto Shivata with joy and hauled him up onto his feet, while Okotan extended a hand to pull Liten up.
I was relieved that we had at least avoided the worst-case scenario, but the fight was still far from over. I looked around cautiously and spotted Fuscus’s face in the center of the ceiling. Its circular lighted eyes blinked, while its mouth opened into a diamond and boomed with an eerie vwo, vwo, vwo laugh. The symbol was back on its forehead, but there was no telling when it would vanish again.
“Guys! It’s too early to celebrate!” I shouted, brandishing my sword. “Let’s keep fighting now that we know the change in its pattern! Shivata, I want you to go down the stairs and recover HP!”
Without his Iron Mail, it was too dangerous for Shivata to continue fighting, I thought—but the veteran front-runner already had his equipment mannequin open. He shouted, “Sorry, but I’m gonna ignore that order! I’m not walking down those steps until we beat this boss!!”
“But your armor—!”
“I have a replacement set! I can still fight!”
Just as he said, his shirt was promptly covered by a fresh set of heavy armor. It looked a bit weaker than the Iron Mail he’d just lost, but there was enough defense there to do the job.
“…All right! Just don’t push it!” I called out. Shivata gave me a thumbs-up, potion in his mouth. Up on the ceiling, Fuscus mocked our newfound determination again. The glowing lines resumed moving.
From that point on, we managed not to stumble into any major injuries, though we didn’t exactly break it down into perfectly stable patterns. The big trouble was still when the boss’s face moved to the floor; nobody got gobbled up like that again, but because the position of the symbol shifted around to different limbs, there were a few times we failed to prevent the debuff voice attack in time. In addition to lowered defense, the debuffs caused a variety of random effects like reduced vision, reduced hearing, reduced balance, and slipping damage, and those suffering sensory effects couldn’t always avoid the grabbing and stomping attacks.
But with admirable coordination, our impromptu raid managed to free the trapped members or carry the stomped ones to the wall for healing. After nearly thirty minutes, we had taken down the fourth and fifth HP bars, and at 8:05 PM, about an hour after the battle started, we reached the sixth and final bar.
“Vwohhhhh!!”
The face in the ceiling roared at maximum volume and the eye rings turned a deep red. “It’s gonna change patterns again! If you’re short on potions, say the word!” I shouted.
“I’m in a bit of trouble!” “Me, too!” shouted Hafner and Wolfgang, so I pulled two small bags containing six potions each out of my inventory and handed them over. Meanwhile, the blue lines crisscrossing the entire chamber were moving in an entirely new pattern.
The floor lines shrank around the staircase in the center, then returned toward the outer
walls. As they reached the walls, they climbed up vertically, gathering around the face in the middle of the ceiling.
The lines that had harassed us all battle long disappeared, leaving only blank black floor behind. All twelve of us tensed nervously.
The blue light writhed wildly around Fuscus’s face like a mane, and he dipped downward. The lines gathered into four thick bundles, target circles forming at the end of each one. The players stuck beneath them darted away, but the arms and legs that appeared were slower than before. This time, they continued growing, producing elbows and knees, eventually shoulders and hips, then a blocky torso…
“Vwooooaaaa!!”
Fuscus the Vacant Colossus, boss of the fifth floor, separated from the ceiling as a proper humanoid golem at last, roaring even louder than before.
“Retreaaat!!”
I didn’t even need to give the order. Everyone was sprinting to the south side of the chamber. A moment later, Fuscus landed on the floor with a deafening crash.
The blue lines covered the surface of the thirty-foot-plus giant’s body. Starting from the face, they quickly turned from blue to an angry bloodred. In seconds, it was red all the way down to the tips of its feet. Fuscus roared for a third time and raised its arms high, the ends bulging like hammers.
Seeing that my companions had been bowled back by the sight, I called out orders instinctively.
“Now that the boss is human-shaped, we can use our original strategy! A-Team blocks, B-Team attacks! Prioritize hate management!’
“G-got it!” said Hafner, leader of A-Team, and called for his party members. Asuna, Agil’s group, and I fanned out on either side so that the heavy fighters were in front of the boss, and the lighter troops were to the sides, weapons bristling.
“Let’s whittle down that last bar!!” I called.
“Yeah!!” came the responses in a fierce wave. The boss responded by stepping forward with a massive, heavy foot.
Shivata and Liten, main tanks of A-Team, came forward, holding their shields up on the left side. With perfectly synchronized motions, they raised their right hands and thrust their left hands forward. The shields glowed silver and rang like temple bells. It was Threatening Roar, a taunting skill that required high Shield skill proficiency.
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