There were a heavy, sharp sound and the powerful, unmistakable flash of a critical hit. The kobold’s large body slumped in midair, and he fell to the ground without producing his deadly whirlwind.
“Gruhh!” he growled, and flailed wildly in an attempt to get to his feet. I’d inflicted him with the Tumble status that was unique to humanoid monsters.
Somehow, I managed to land in balance and, without missing a beat, pushed every last ounce of air out of my lungs.
“Full attack, everybody!! Surround him!!”
“Raaahh!!”
Agil’s gang of six unleashed all the frustration of their long defensive shift. They spread out around Illfang and tore into him with Vertical sword skills. Axes, maces, and hammers flashed in a spectrum of color and pounded the kobold’s body. The explosion of light and sound began to bite serious chunks out of the enemy’s HP gauge, which was fixed at the top of every player’s vision.
It was a bet. If we could lower the Kobold Lord’s remaining HP to nothing before he got back to his feet, we won. But if he recovered from his status and instantly performed another Tsumuji-guruma, he would slice everyone for certain this time. My Sonic Leap was on cooldown. I couldn’t attack him in midair again.
Agil’s group finished their skill animations and initiated the preliminary motions for the next round, when suddenly Illfang stopped struggling and abruptly sat up.
“We didn’t make it in time,” I hissed, when I noticed that Asuna was standing right next to me. “Asuna, get ready to do your final Linear with me!”
“Okay!”
I had to grin at how quickly her response echoed my command.
Six weapons snarled at once, and the boss was swallowed by a whirl of flashing lights again. But he did not wait for their onslaught to die down. Illfang roared and got to his feet. There was barely 3 percent left of his HP bar, but there it shone, red and prominent.
Agil was under a delay and couldn’t move. Illfang was impervious to stunning or knockbacks now that he’d recovered from the tumble—he transitioned smoothly into his jumping motion.
“Gooo!!” I screamed. Asuna and I leapt together.
She slipped between the tanks and unleashed a furious Linear directly into the boss’s left flank. A second later, my blue-lit sword ripped from the kobold king’s right shoulder to his belly.
Only a single pixel remained on his HP bar.
The beastman seemed to grin. I returned a ferocious smirk of my own and flipped my wrist back.
“Raaaahh!!”
I raised my sword with a soul-shattering roar. The blade, pitted here and there after the fierce ordeal, tore upward to Illfang’s left shoulder to complete a V shape: a two-part sword combo, Vertical Arc.
The kobold’s great form suddenly shuddered weakly and faltered backward. His wolflike face turned up to the ceiling and emitted a keening wail. Countless tiny cracks appeared all over his body. His grip loosened, and the katana clattered to the floor.
Illfang the Kobold Lord, boss of the first floor of Aincrad, shattered into a million tiny pieces of glass.
As I slumped to the floor beneath some unseen pressure, a silent message in the purple system font read, You got the Last Attack!!
15
THE REMAINING SENTINELS WERE OBLITERATED AT the same time as their boss. The torches on the walls shifted from a dim orange to bright yellow, removing the gloom that shrouded the chamber. A cool breeze swept through the room, carrying the heat of the battle away with it.
No one wanted to break the silence that descended. Teams E and G stood in the back, the center groups of A, C, D, and F were kneeling in recovery mode, and Agil’s team B, the last line of tank defense, sat on the floor, all staring around warily. It was as though they were all afraid the beast lord might come back to life at any moment.
Even I was dead still, my sword still raised at the end of the final slash.
Was it truly the end? Or would there be another surprise, another alteration from the beta?
A small pale hand touched my arm, gently pulling the sword down. It was Asuna the fencer. Her chestnut-brown hair rippled in the breeze as she stared at me.
Only now, with her familiar hooded cape removed, did I realize just how beautiful she was. No player could truly be this gorgeous. Asuna accepted my dumbstruck gaze without a complaint—something that would probably never happen again—for several moments, then quietly said, “Nice work.”
Finally, it hit me. It was over … We’d finally removed the barrier that might have trapped eight thousand players on the first floor forever.
As though the game was waiting for me to make that realization, a new message suddenly popped into existence. Experience gained, col distributed … and loot.
The faces of the other members finally returned to normal as they received the same message. A rousing cheer broke the silence.
Some roared with their fists in the air. Some hugged their partners. Some put on absurd dances. Amid the storm of celebration, one man stood and approached. It was Agil.
“That was brilliant command, and even better swordsmanship. Congratulations—this victory belongs to you.”
I couldn’t help but notice that he spoke the word “congratulations” in English with perfect intonation. The big man grinned widely and extended a thick fist.
I thought about how to respond to this and sadly couldn’t come up with anything better than a muttered “Nah…” I lifted my own fist to at least give him a bump when someone bellowed behind me.
“Why?!”
The entire room fell silent again at the agonized, tearful shriek. I tore my gaze from Asuna and Agil to look at a man with light armor and a scimitar. I didn’t recognize him at first, but when the next words poured from his twisted lips, I finally understood.
“Why did you abandon Diavel to die?!”
He was from team C, one of the perished knight Diavel’s friends. Behind him, the other four members were standing, their faces red and miserable. Some were even crying.
“Abandon…?”
“You know what you did! You… you knew the moves the boss was using! If you’d told us that information to start with, Diavel wouldn’t have died!”
The other raid members stirred at these words, murmuring among themselves.
“Now that you mention it …”
“How did he know? That stuff wasn’t in the strategy guide …”
To my surprise, Kibaou did not follow up these suspicions. He was standing to the side, his lips firmly closed, as though grappling with indecision. Instead, another member of team E stepped forward and jabbed an accusing finger at me.
“I … I know the truth! He’s a beta tester! That’s how he knew the boss’s patterns! He knows all the best quests and hunting grounds! He’s hiding them from us!!”
There was no surprise on the faces of team C. I doubted Diavel had told them himself—he would not bring up the topic of the beta test on his own, as he was hiding his involvement in it—but they’d no doubt all had the same suspicion when I identified those katana skills.
The scimitar man’s eyes boiled over with hatred, and he prepared to level another accusation at my feet when a mace warrior in Agil’s tank party raised his hand and spoke calmly.
“But the strategy guide we got yesterday said it was based on the boss’s attack patterns in the beta. If he’s really a beta tester, wouldn’t all of his knowledge be based on what we learned from that?”
“W-well …”
The scimitar-wielder pressed on in anger, speaking for the rest of his teammates. “That strategy guide was all fake. Argo sold us a bunch of lies. She’s a former beta tester too; there’s no way she’d give away the truth for free.”
Uh-oh. This was heading in a bad direction.
I held my breath. I could take whatever criticism was directed my way, but we had to avoid an outright witch hunt of Argo and the other beta testers. But how to prevent their hatred from running out of control …?
&n
bsp; I looked down at the dark floor, where the system messages hanging in view came into sharper relief. My experience, col and items …
An idea abruptly popped into my head, followed by a terrible indecision. If I made this choice, there was no telling what might happen to me. I might even be assassinated when I least expected it, as I once feared. But at the very least, it might redirect the anger away from Argo …
Agil and Asuna had finally heard enough. They spoke up simultaneously.
“Oh, come on …”
“Listen …”
I cut them off with a gesture and stepped forward, assuming an arrogant look and staring coldly into the scimitar-wielder’s eyes. I slumped my shoulders and spoke in as emotionless a voice as I could manage.
“A former beta tester? Please… don’t treat me like those amateurs.”
“Um…what …?”
“Think back. The odds were stacked against anyone trying to get into the SAO closed beta. How many of the thousand who made it in do you think were true MMO fans? They were all noobs who barely understood how to level. You guys are way smarter about this game than they ever were.”
Forty-two players silently took in my disdainful words. There was a chill in the air, an unseen blade that traced the skin, just as it had before we tackled the boss.
“But I’m not like them.” I grinned snidely. “I made it to a floor that no one else in the beta reached. I knew the boss’s katana attacks because I’d fought mobs on a way higher floor who used the same moves. I know plenty about this game—way more than Argo.”
“What … do you mean…?” rasped the man from team E who had first labeled me a beta tester. “You’re … you’re worse than a beta tester … You’re a cheat! A cheater!”
Calls of cheater and beta cheater rang out from me. Eventually they blended together into a strange new word, “beater.”
“A beater? I like the sound of that,” I proclaimed loudly for the entire group to hear, fixing them all with a level stare. “That’s right, I’m a beater. Don’t you ever insult my skill by calling me a former tester.”
It was for the best.
Now the four to five hundred beta testers still out there in the game could be broadly divided into two categories. The vast majority were “simple, amateur testers,” and a select few were “filthy beaters who hoarded their information.”
The hostility of the retail players would be turned upon the beaters. Anyone being outed as a beta tester wouldn’t necessarily have to be afraid of retribution.
In exchange, I’d never be invited to join any front-running guilds or parties … but that was no different from the way I already played. I’d been a solo player, and I would continue to be one. It was that simple.
I looked away from the pale-faced scimitar wielder and the others from teams E and C, opened my player window, and fiddled with my equipment mannequin.
Instead of the familiar old dark gray leather coat, I put on the new unique armor I’d just received from the boss, the Coat of Midnight. Tiny lights covered my chest and the faded old gray material turned into sleek black leather. It was a long coat, too; the hem hung down below my knees.
With a flourish of my new coat, I spun around and faced the small door at the back of the boss chamber.
“I’ll go activate the teleport gate on the second floor. There’s a bit of a hike through the wilderness to reach the main city once you leave the exit above, so you can tag along—if you’re not afraid of being slaughtered by unfamiliar mobs.”
Agil and Asuna gave me appraising looks as I strode forward. Their eyes said they knew what I was doing. That, at least, was some small comfort. I gave them a hint of a smile, picked up my pace, and pushed open the door on the back wall behind the empty throne.
At the top of a narrow, spiraling staircase, there was another door. I opened it gently and was met by a stunning sight. The door opened directly from the middle of a sheer cliff, with a narrow terrace-styled downward staircase carved out of the rock to the left. For the moment, I simply drank in the sight of the second floor.
Unlike the varied terrain of the first floor, the second was a series of rocky mesas from end to end. The upper areas of the mountains were covered in soft green grasses, grazing land for large cattle monsters.
Urbus, the main town of the second floor, was carved directly into the top of one of those mesas. All I had to do was descend these stairs, walk half a mile to reach Urbus, then touch the teleport gate in the center of the city to activate it. At that point, it would be connected to the teleporter in the Town of Beginnings below, and anyone could travel between the two.
If I actually did die on the short journey—or just sat here and did nothing—the teleporter would activate automatically anyway, two hours after the boss’s destruction. But word had no doubt spread to the Town of Beginnings about today’s attempt on the boss, and I could imagine a crowd of players standing in the town center, waiting for the moment that blue warp gate appeared. I wanted to get to Urbus and open it up for them… but I had the right to stop and enjoy the scenery for a minute first.
I walked forward and sat down at the edge of the terrace carved out of the rock face. Beyond the many craggy mountains was a tiny sliver of blue sky at the outer perimeter of Aincrad.
How many minutes did I sit there? Eventually I heard petite footsteps coming up the spiral staircase behind me. I didn’t turn around. The owner of the steps reached the door and stopped, then sighed and came to sit next to me.
“… I told you not to come,” I muttered. She looked affronted.
“No, you didn’t. You said to tag along if I wasn’t afraid of dying.”
“Oh … right. Sorry.”
I ducked my head in embarrassment and glanced over at Asuna, whose face was beautiful from any angle. Her light brown eyes looked back at me briefly, then returned to the scenery below. She exhaled and said, “It’s so pretty.”
After a minute of silence, she spoke again.
“I have messages from Agil and Kibaou.”
“Oh…what did they say?”
“Agil said we should tackle the second floor boss, too. And Kibaou said …”
She cleared her throat, expression serious, and clumsily attempted to re-create his Kansai accent.
“… Ya saved my ass this time, but I still can’t get along with ya. I’m gonna do things my own way to beat this game, y’hear?”
“… I see.”
The words echoed in my head a few times. Eventually Asuna coughed again and pointedly turned her head away.
“Also… I have a message from me.”
“Um…yes?”
“You called out my name during the battle.”
It took me a moment to remember. Yes, perhaps I had given her an order directly by name.
“S-sorry, I didn’t meant to disrespect you, if that’s what you think…Or … did I pronounce it wrong?”
Now it was Asuna’s turn to look skeptical.
“Pronounce it wrong …? How did you even know it in the first place? I never told you my name, nor did you tell me yours.”
“Huh?!” I yelled. What did she mean? We were still registered in a party, so there were two HP bars to the upper left of my vision. Beneath the lower of the two was a little label reading “Asuna” …
“Wait … are you saying… this is your very first time being in a party?”
“Yes.”
“… I see.”
I reached up with my right hand and pointed to the left side of Asuna’s face. “Do you see an extra HP bar over here, in addition to your own? Is anything written beneath it?”
“Um…”
Asuna turned her head, so I reached out and stopped it with my fingers.
“No, if you turn your face, the readouts will move with it. Keep your head still and look to your left.”
“Like … this?”
Her brown eyes awkwardly rolled left, finding a string of letters that I couldn’t see. Her graceful lips so
unded out three syllables.
“Ki … ri … to. Kirito? That’s your name?”
“Yep.”
“Oh … so it was written here the entire time …”
Suddenly Asuna twitched in surprise. I realized that I’d been holding my hand to her cheek for several seconds, almost as though I was initiating the motion for a skill.
I pulled my hands back so fast, they almost made a zooming sound. After a few seconds, I thought I heard a soft giggle. Was she laughing? Asuna the kobold overkiller, master of the perfect Linear thrust? That was a sight I wanted to see, but I resisted the urge to turn.
The laughing ended all too soon, and she followed it with a soft statement.
“… Actually, Kirito, I came up here to thank you.”
“For … the cream bread and the bath?” I asked without thinking. She denied it in a mildly terrifying way, then gave it some thought and agreed that they were part of it.
“It’s for … a lot of things. Thanks for everything. I think … I’ve finally found something here that I want to do, a goal I want to reach.”
“Oh? What’s that?” I glanced at her. Asuna grinned for just an instant.
“It’s a secret.” She stood up and took a step back. “I’m gonna keep trying. I’ll try to survive, to be stronger. Until I can reach the place I want to be.”
I nodded without turning around.
“I know… You can be stronger. Not just in terms of your fighting skill, but in a much more important, personal sense. So take it from me … if someone you trust invites you to a guild, don’t turn them down. There’s an absolute limit to what you can accomplish playing solo …”
For several seconds, the only sound was Asuna breathing. When she did speak, it was not what I expected to hear.
“The next time we meet, tell me how you took me out of that labyrinth.”
“Sure …” I was about to say it was simple, then stopped myself and added, “You bet. In fact … there’s one more thing I ought to tell you. What I was about to say before the meeting two days ago …”
That’s right. I owed her an explanation. She ought to know that the deaths of two thousand and her terrible despair were at least in part my responsibility for being a self-interested beta tester … a beater.
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