I landed hard, ignoring the LA bonus readout entirely, and took a deep breath to command everyone to retreat back against the wall. There was no time to worry about whether I was overstepping my bounds or not.
But my breath caught in my throat before I could speak.
The onyx taurus king, who should have still been ten seconds away, was leaning backward, his massive chest bulging like a barrel. That looked like …
A breath attack. Long range.
And right in his path, back to him, her eyes fixed straight at me, was Asuna.
If she didn’t move now, there would be no escape. I couldn’t waste time racing over to her. But that kind of logical reasoning went out the window.
“Asuna, jump to your right!” I shouted as I dashed toward her. There were other players in the breath range, of course, but my tunnel vision was fixed on no one but the hooded fencer. She must have sensed the danger approaching from behind in my voice and expression. She leapt as I commanded, not bothering to turn around.
As soon as her boots left the black paving stone, I reached her and slipped my left arm around her slender body, leaping in the same direction to add to our momentum. Even at full strength, the jump speed was unbearably slow. The arabesque pattern in the floor flowed past, glacial in pace …
The right side of my vision went pure white.
The dry shockwave that hit me was exactly like a clap of thunder. Asterios the Taurus King’s breath attack was not poison or fire but lightning. And by the time we realized it, the both of us, and over twenty other players in the raid, were enveloped in its white blaze.
There was no such thing as attack, healing, or support magic in Sword Art Online. But that didn’t mean that all traces of magic were absent from the game world. There was an infinite variety of magical items to be found that raised stats or provided buff effects, and the blessing of an NPC priest at a church in one of the bigger towns granted a player’s weapon a temporary holy effect.
But those supernatural effects did not exist solely for our benefit. In fact, the majority were a detriment. For example, the many special attack skills employed by monsters: poison, fire, ice, and lightning breath.
The most powerful breath attack in terms of damage was fire, but lightning was no joke. For one, it was instantaneous—it traveled the full length of its range in the instant it was unleashed. Worse, it had a very high chance of stunning its victims, with the worst-case scenario involving an even more dangerous debuff.
Asuna and I took Asterios’s lightning breath to our legs, and we both lost close to 20 percent of our health in one go. A green border began to blink around the gauge, and a debuff icon of the same color appeared as well.
Instantly, I felt my physical senses growing distant. I couldn’t move my legs to land upright, even if I tried. Asuna and I slammed into the ground on our backs. This was no mere tumble effect—after all of my warnings, we were now paralyzed.
“Asu … na,” I rasped. She was laid across my chest like an immobile plank. “Heal with … potion.”
I tried desperately to move my stiff hand. There were two red HP potions and one green paralysis antidote in the belt pouch on my right side. Somehow, I felt around and grabbed the green one, popped the cork and held it up to my lips, even as the rumbling footsteps grew closer.
Once I finished the minty liquid, I hesitantly looked up to see that the massive taurus king was barely ten yards away. His attack had hit several other players with paralysis, and over a dozen of them littered the ground between us and him.
The other thirty players who escaped the lightning breath were making their way around the slowly moving boss, but they weren’t sure how to react. The reason why was clear: The raid’s leader and sub-leader, Lind and Kibaou, were both paralyzed, and the closest to the boss’s position. They were desperately trying to give orders, but a whisper was the best anyone suffering from paralysis could produce. None of the players outside Asterios’s attack range could hear them.
But very close to my ears came the sound of a fragile, beautiful voice.
“Why … did you come?”
I looked back to see two very large hazel eyes right in front of my face. Asuna was collapsed directly on top of me, empty potion bottle clutched in her hand. She repeated herself.
“Why …?”
She was asking me why I’d run toward her when I realized the taurus’s breath attack was coming, rather than darting directly out of harm’s way. I wondered what the answer was myself, but it did not become apparent. All I could say was “I don’t know.”
And for reasons that were once again a mystery to me, she smiled gently, closed her eyes, and set her hooded head against my shoulder.
I looked over Asuna’s back to see Asterios raising his massive hammer high overhead. The crushing implement, twice as large as even Baran’s, was aimed right at Lind and Kibaou.
So this is it, I told myself.
If our two leaders died, the rest of the raid party would flee out of the boss chamber, leaving behind the ten or so paralyzed, including me and Asuna, to die … But at some later point in time, they would be able to use the information gleaned from Asterios’s appearance and attacks to launch a second attempt.
The worst regret of all this was that I wasn’t able to save Asuna and her limitless potential. As I’d told her after the first-floor boss, she could have one day led an enormous guild and been a leader to the player population. Like a shooting star, endlessly lighting up the sky of this dark, hopeless game of death.
I hallucinated a strange light, passing across the ceiling of the dim chamber.
But even after opening my eyes wider, the shining arc did not disappear. It reached an apex and began to fall, heading right for the crown on Asterios’s brow as he was preparing to swing his hammer …
It wasn’t until a high-pitched squeal of metal rang through the coliseum and Asterios lurched in pain that I realized the light wasn’t a trick of the eye.
That was a long-range attack that shouldn’t have been possible at this point in SAO, a sword skill under the Throwing Knife category. But the thrown weapon didn’t simply fall to the ground after hitting the boss’s weak point; it spun around and flew back across the room, as though pulled by an invisible string.
Asterios recovered from his delay and roared in anger, making a slow turn back to his attacker. That was the first actual hit on the boss, so it automatically drew the enemy’s attention.
Suddenly, a powerful set of arms pulled me and Asuna off the floor. The mighty warrior, holding two people aloft without any help, spoke in a deep baritone.
“Sorry about that! I actually got a little spooked!”
Agil the axe-warrior carried us over to the eastern wall. His three companions were also busy moving paralyzed party members to a safer position. As if brought to their senses, the remainders of the blue and green teams raced over to the other immobilized fighters.
I tried to crane my neck up so I could see as he ferried us under his arms like suitcases. As we moved, the southern side of the coliseum came into view behind the boss’s massive bulk.
About thirty feet from the entrance, a small figure clutching a bizarre weapon was staring up at the looming giant with a resolute look on his face.
“Isn’t that—?!” Agil cried in surprise as he dropped us on the floor against the wall. And it wasn’t just him—virtually everyone in the chamber was staring with shock at this new, forty-eighth player.
Not because he had suddenly appeared just before the boss routed us, or because he used a strange and unfamiliar weapon. It was because we had all seen this man hammering away at an anvil in the eastern plaza of Taran just a few days ago. It was Nezha the blacksmith.
He was dressed much differently now, of course. The brown leather apron was replaced by a bronze breastplate, gauntlets of the same material, and an open-faced helmet. But the image of a beardless dwarf that his short, stocky build and round, dour face created hadn’t been neutralize
d by this new look; if anything, his outfit accentuated it.
The entire raid was shocked that a blacksmith would be here, participating in the boss raid, with only two exceptions: Asuna and me, the ones who’d convinced him to change careers in the first place. I was surprised as well, of course, but only because I hadn’t expected him to be able to charge straight through the labyrinth alone, after just three days of training.
But there were others here who would be shocked in a much different way from the rest of us. As soon as the thought occurred to me, a group rushed forward from the raid party in the center of the room. They came to a stop once they reached an angle that gave them a clear view of Nezha’s face around the side of the boss. It was team G … the Legend Braves.
“Nez…”
Orlando started to call the name of his missing partner, but he held back at the last instant. It seemed the Braves were still trying to hide the fact that Nezha was part of their guild.
For an instant, Nezha looked back at his silent former companions with a pained look, but he composed himself and yelled, “I’ll draw the boss away! Get everyone back on their feet now, while you can!”
Asterios’s walking speed—for the first of his many HP bars, at least—was quite slow. If Nezha used the hundred-yard hall effectively, he could probably continue to occupy the enemy’s attention all by himself. If he held out until all of the paralyzed had recovered, we might be able to evacuate the entire raid group safely…
But no. It wouldn’t work. The boss moved slowly, yes, but he had that instantaneous lightning breath to make up for it. There was no way to dodge that onslaught on your very first encounter with it. And based on the moment of Nezha’s appearance, he probably hadn’t seen Asterios’s first attack.
“Agil, warn him about …”
The breath attack, I wanted to say, but I was already too late. Asterios stopped still and pulled his head back again, sucking in breath. His chest puffed up into a round ball, and little sparks crackled out of his nostrils. Nezha was standing still, looking up at the boss’s head.
“Move …” I rasped.
“Get out of the way!!” someone in the raid shouted. But Nezha nimbly leapt aside before the words were even out of his mouth. The next instant, a brilliant cone of white lightning shot from the boss’s gaping mouth. The breath attack reached nearly to the exit of the room, but Nezha was clear of its path by a good six feet.
The way he moved… Did he know exactly when to dodge?
My eyes went wide, and I suddenly heard a very familiar voice… but not one I would have expected to hear here, of all places.
“The boss’s eyes glow just before the breath attack.”
I looked up from the floor, stunned, to see the tile pattern on the wall warp out of place. An even smaller figure than Nezha appeared out of thin air. My mouth fell open (as did Asuna’s and Agil’s, if I had to guess) as I stared at that familiar whiskered face—Argo the Rat, the information dealer.
It was only afterward that I learned that she’d undertaken a series of quests beginning in the jungle outside the labyrinth that eventually earned her information on Asterios the Taurus King, the true boss of this floor. She learned not just his attack patterns, but the best way to counteract him—such as staggering him with a thrown weapon to the crown atop his head.
When Argo discovered that quest, she zipped around turning in objectives, and only finished just after the raid party entered the labyrinth. Messages couldn’t reach anyone in a dungeon, and it was a question whether Argo and her agility-heavy build could make it through the labyrinth alone.
As she wavered with indecision outside the tower, she happened across Nezha, who was also preparing to brave the dangers of the labyrinth alone. They worked together—using Argo’s Hiding skill and Nezha’s throwing weapons to avoid or lure mobs out of their way—and reached the boss chamber just before Asterios appeared and threw the battle into chaos.
“Why are you still lying around? You’re not paralyzed anymore,” Argo said. I finally noticed that the paralysis icon beneath my HP bar was gone. I sprang to my feet and sprinted over to the Anneal Blade where it lay after I was hit by the breath attack. Asuna’s Wind Fleuret was also nearby, so I brought them both back to the wall. I considered whether or not to address what Asuna said while we were on the ground, then decided it wasn’t the right moment.
A quick look around told me that nearly everyone else had recovered from their paralysis. Lind and Kibaou were on their feet, but I saw Argo marching over toward them. For an instant, I even forgot that Nezha was single-handedly keeping the boss occupied.
Argo the Rat was, along with me, one of the most prominent publicly known beta testers in the game, and Lind and Kibaou were leaders of the anti-tester movement. As I expected, Lind didn’t even pretend to hide his disgust, while Kibaou’s expression was more uneasy and uncertain.
“Hey, spiky. Long time no see,” Argo greeted Kibaou, ignoring Lind entirely. That’s when it hit me.
Kibaou was the very man who’d attempted to buy my Anneal Blade through Argo. It was the kind of shady dealing that no leader would want associated with him, and Argo could sell the details to anyone who paid the price.
He didn’t respond to her greeting, so she continued, “If you’re gonna pull out, better do it now. But if you want info, I can sell it to you. For the low, low price of … nothing.”
The moment Asterios’s lightning breath hit Lind and Kibaou, they were at the greatest risk of dying of anyone in the raid. So it was a bit of a surprise to me that after just a few seconds of deliberation, they chose to continue the fight. Of course, we wouldn’t know if that was the right choice or not until the end of the fight. But the tables had turned significantly since the moment just after the boss appeared. Nezha had successfully pulled Asterios’s aggro for over two minutes, giving the rest of the raid enough time to recover from paralysis and refill their HP. On top of that, now we had the details on the boss’s patterns.
“All right, let’s begin the attack! Teams A and D, forward!” Lind ordered. The heavily armored tanks rushed in at King Asterios. Their body-blow charge hit him in the legs, finally drawing his attention away from Nezha.
Instantly, he started to sway, as though all of the tension keeping him upright had snapped. Asuna and I raced over.
“Nezha!”
The former blacksmith looked up, his expression as weak as usual … but with a new core of strength behind his smile. He held up the throwing weapon in his right hand.
It was the weapon I’d given him—a thick, bladed, circular throwing tool about eight inches across. The only way to get it at this point was as a rare drop from the Taurus Ringhurler enemies in this labyrinth. It fell under the Chakram subcategory of throwing knives, but unlike the actual chakrams from ancient India, this one had a leather grip along part of the circle. The grip made it useful for both throwing like a disc, or augmenting a punch like a set of brass knuckles.
Because of that versatility, chakrams in SAO couldn’t be used with the Throwing Knives skill alone. They also required the mastery of Martial Arts, the extra skill that could only be learned from the bearded master hidden deep in the mountains.
As he said himself three days ago, he could hit monsters with a thrown weapon without having to worry too much about his perspective issues. But orthodox throwing knives were a quantifiable weapon that ran out over time and weren’t suited for a main weapon. But the chakram was like a boomerang: It returned to the thrower’s hand automatically. Thanks to that, he didn’t need to worry about ammunition.
Nezha steadied his weary legs and held up his chakram. The blade was glowing yellow. Even though I was the one who’d given him the weapon, I didn’t know the name of this sword skill.
“Yaah!”
With a powerful cry, his hand flashed, and the sparkling ring flew high in the air. It raced across the ceiling, a brilliant burst of light, and hit Asterios on the crown with perfect accuracy as he raised his gian
t hammer. There was another high-pitched clang, and the boss’s muscled torso writhed. One of the attackers in Kibaou’s team shouted, “Nice!” from the taurus king’s feet.
The chakram hurtled back with alarming speed and smacked right back into Nezha’s hand, thanks to the assistance of the game engine. He turned to me and Asuna and smiled again as though he were about to burst into tears.
“It’s like a dream come true. Here I am… in the boss battle, playing a role …”
His voice quavered and died out there. Nezha swallowed and tried again.
“I’ll be fine! Go ahead and join the battle!”
“All right. Do your best to read his lightning breath ahead of time and stagger him before he uses it. You’re the key to our victory!”
I turned around and saw not just Asuna but Agil and his band of hearty toughs, ready for action.
Wasn’t Agil supposed to be the leader of this team? I’ll have to apologize to him later for taking over.
I shouted an order to the group. “Let’s go!”
They echoed my call, and we headed for the unceasing series of sword flashes centered around our foe.
The true boss of the second floor of Aincrad, Asterios the Taurus King, was a third bigger than even Baran the General Taurus. His paralyzing lightning breath had terrified us momentarily, but with Argo’s knowledge of his patterns, the group had devised a safe and steady strategy that was chipping away at his health.
The greatest role in the battle was undoubtedly Nezha and his throwing weapon, but it soon became clear that the single strongest group was team G—not Lind or Kibaou’s forces, but the Legend Braves.
Like General Baran, Asterios used the area-effect skill Numbing Detonation, but Orlando and his team were able to take the numbing effects at very close range without ever being stunned. When the king lifted his mighty hammer, the other groups had to evacuate to safety, but team G stayed right on him, continuing their assault without fear of his detrimental attacks. Even Lind had no idea when to give the order for them to retreat.
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