Sword Art Online Progressive 1

by Reki Kawahara

  The five Braves had upgraded their equipment to about the maximum it could be at this point, but their player levels were below the average of the raid. They probably saw this boss battle as the best chance to close that gap.

  And yet, disagreeing with the raid leader’s orders wasn’t going to get them anywhere. The scene could have easily turned into an ugly shouting match, but the blue and green players didn’t let it get any worse than whispers.

  I suspected that was due to the powerful aura the Legend Braves were exuding. Level, stats, and skill proficiency were all hidden variables not exposed to the public—but equipment power was different. Weapons and armor augmented close to the limit began to glow with a depth that reinforced their value.

  At the present moment, the best any player—including me—could do was upgrade their weapon, and perhaps their shield, to that glowing state. But the Braves were a different story. With the massive sum of col they reaped in the past week, they’d been able to buy full sets of excellent equipment and power it all up. All of their gear was glowing as if under a powerful buff spell, and it created the strong impression that these five men were not to be trifled with.

  Of course, equipment strength was not all there was in the game. More important than anything in SAO was personal experience and the ability to react and adjust. But in the battle ahead against Baran the General Taurus, every value was important—especially armor strength.

  This was because General Baran used an elite version of the taurus race’s special attack …

  “All right. In that case, team G can join the fight against the boss,” Lind said stiffly. I looked up and found myself staring right into the blue-haired man’s eyes again.

  While his hairstyle might have been the same as the one worn by breezy, affable Diavel, Lind seemed to have a significantly more obstinate side to him. He held my gaze this time and said, “According to our prior intelligence, the boss only has one accompanying mob that does not re-pop. I trust team H will be able to handle that alone?”

  Asuna and I sucked in a sharp breath, our hackles raised, but team leader Agil waved a hand to calm us. His voice and manner stayed perfectly calm.

  “It might be one monster, but the intel says that it’s not your average mob, but more of a mid-level boss on its own. Plus, maybe it’s only the one, but we don’t know that for sure. That’s a lot to ask of a single party.”

  The prior intelligence they were referring to was, of course, the second-floor boss edition of Argo’s strategy guide, which appeared just yesterday in Taran. It held the attack patterns and weak points of the boss and its attendant mob, but as the disclaimer on the cover said, all information was based on the beta test.

  The first-floor boss used katana skills that hadn’t been there in the beta, and it led to the death of Diavel the knight. We had to assume that there were alterations since the beta here, as well. In a worst-case scenario, there might be two or more of “Nato the Colonel Taurus” accompanying Baran instead of just one.

  But Lind actually agreed with Agil’s rebuttal.

  “Of course, I have no intention of repeating the mistakes of the first floor. If we spot any difference in the patterns listed in our prior intelligence, we will immediately retreat and rethink our plan. If the attendant mob is too much for one party to handle, we’ll send another team to help. Will that do?”

  It was about as much as we could hope for at this stage. Agil murmured in the affirmative, and Asuna and I let out the breaths we’d been holding in.

  Next came a review of the boss’s attack patterns and a final check of each team’s individual strategy, leaving just two minutes until the scheduled fight time of two o’clock. That was only a general guideline, so nothing was stopping us from beginning the fight slightly before or after the hour.

  Lind raised his hand and said, “All right, it’s a bit early, but …”

  Suddenly, he was cut off by a familiar phrase from Kibaou, who had, somewhat surprisingly, kept quiet this entire time.

  “Now, hang on just a sec!”

  “…What is it, Kibaou?”

  “You been basin’ everything on this strategy guide so far, Lind. Now, all this info is comin’ from the info dealer who ain’t even been in the boss room, right? Is that really good enough for us?”

  Lind’s mouth twisted in displeasure. “I won’t claim that it’s perfect, but it’s better than nothing, isn’t it? What’s your alternative? Are you going to walk in there to check out the boss for yourself?”

  Now it was the green-clad Liberation Squad that bristled in anger, but Kibaou simply smiled confidently.

  “What I’m sayin’ is, we know we got at least one person here who’s seen this boss for himself. So why don’t we get his take on it?”

  What?

  I took a step back and to the left, to hide behind Asuna. But Kibaou lifted his right hand and pointed straight at me. Dozens of eyes turned in my direction, and Asuna callously stepped aside to avoid them.

  “Whaddaya say, Black Beater? Why don’cha offer us some advice on this boss battle?” he bellowed. I couldn’t read his expression to see what he was really thinking.

  “…What does he think he’s doing?” I muttered quietly, but Asuna could only shrug.

  I’d heard that Kibaou’s Aincrad Liberation Squad rallied around a resistance to the former beta testers. As a means to compete with the testers who rushed out to monopolize the game’s best resources, they aggressively recruited new members from the thousands left down in the Town of Beginnings, distributed money and items fairly, and planned to conquer the game through sheer numbers. At least, according to Kibaou’s theory.

  So what did he stand to gain by giving a known ex-tester a platform? You’d think it was clearly some kind of trap… but there was something in the cactus-haired swordsman’s eyes that could be taken as honest fervor.

  If that look’s an act, yer one helluva actor, I muttered to myself. One, two, three steps forward, and I had a proper view of every face in the raid.

  “Let me just make this clear. I only know the boss from the beta test as well. So it’s totally possible that something … or everything about this boss has been changed.”

  As I spoke, the muttering players eventually fell silent. Even Lind, who I figured would interrupt, did not speak.

  “But I can say that the regular tauruses in the labyrinth use the exact same attacks that they did in the beta. So I think it’s a certainty that the boss will use sword skills that are an extension of that pattern. As you just discussed, you want to evade when he goes into his motion, but what’s most important is how to react when you take the first hit. Avoid getting hit with double debuffs at all costs. In the beta, every player that got stunned and then paralyzed …”

  Pretty much died, I stopped myself from saying.

  “At any rate, if you stay calm and watch his hammer, you can avoid the second hit. As long as we all take that into account, this lineup can beat the boss without any casualties.”

  Nothing I said couldn’t be found in Argo’s guide, but virtually all the players present nodded in understanding when I was done.

  As usual, Kibaou’s expression was a cipher to me, but Lind had a look of surprise. He clapped his hands briskly. “All right, everyone: Avoid the second hit! Now let’s get started!”

  He turned around and faced the giant set of doors and loudly drew his scimitar, holding it aloft.

  “We’re going to crush the second-floor boss!!”

  The dim corridor shook with the roar of the gathering.

  Blue hair waving, his left hand pushing the door open, Lind looked very much like Diavel had in that same exact moment back on the first floor.

  12

  MONSTER ATTACKS AGAINST PLAYERS FELL UNDER two general categories. One was direct attacks that dealt HP damage.

  The other was indirect attacks that did not cause direct damage but occasionally posed a significant threat—in other words, debuffs.

  Akihik
o Kayaba, the designer of this game of death, at least had a minimum of sympathy for new players, for he did not grant any of the kobolds in the first-floor labyrinth debuff attacks. The delay effect that led to Diavel’s death was a debuff, in a way, but it was an effect that occurred at a high likelihood when suffering multiple consecutive attacks, and wasn’t a special skill that the kobold lord could use at will.

  Which meant that the tauruses that dwelt in the second-floor labyrinth were the player’s first real experience with serious, regular debuffs.

  “Here it comes!” I cried, recognizing that the double-handed hammer was being lifted straight aloft.

  The rest of my party called out their acknowledgment and jumped backward. The hammer stopped high overhead for an instant, its wide surface glowing with brilliant yellow sparks.

  “Vrrroooooo!!”

  With a roar so fierce, it might as well have been a long-range attack of its own, the beast brought down the hammer. The mass of metal, rippling with lightning, slammed against the dark stone floor. It was the taurus race’s special debuffing skill, Numbing Impact.

  No one was standing within the direct damage range of the blow, of course, but there were also narrow sparking tendrils that extended out from the impact point. One of them shot toward me along the floor, fading out, until it just barely licked the end of my boot.

  Instantly, I felt an unpleasant prickle at my toes. Fortunately, I was just outside of the debuff range, so there was no stun icon showing beneath my HP bar. Everyone else kept farther away from the shockwave, so none of them were affected.

  “Full-power attack!” I shouted, and the six of us fanned out in a semicircle around the taurus and closed. Each person unleashed the strongest sword skill in their weapon’s repertoire. Agil’s two-handed axe, his crewmates’ similar weapons, Asuna’s Wind Fleuret, and my Anneal Blade blasted the beast with an array of colored lights. The bull-man’s three-part HP gauge finally emptied its first bar and opened the second.

  “I think we can do this!” Asuna shouted from her familiar position to my left.

  “Yeah, just don’t get overconfident! Once we get to the third bar, he’ll start using consecutive numbing attacks! Plus,” I raised my voice to ensure that Agil’s group heard me, “based on the first-floor battle, we should assume there might be a new attack when we hit that last bar! If that happens, we all pull back!”

  “Got it!”

  The taurus recovered from its delay at the same time our skill cooldown ended. Agil’s tanks recognized that the next attack would be a sideways blow and took defensive stances along its trajectory. Asuna and I hung back, waiting for the right moment to counter.

  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 beastman. 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.

  “Vrrruuuuvraaaaa!!”

  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.

&
nbsp; 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.