About the players: Kayaba was "nice enough" to send the full list of players — along with their real-world addresses — to the relevant authorities, so that each one could be located and transferred to medical care.
— V —
East Caves of Horunka, 1st Floor — Present
"We should be close," Neo said. "Stay vigilant."
The formation had held since the last intersection: Lisbeth at the point, torch in her off hand, the only light source in a tunnel that had been narrowing incrementally for the past ten minutes. Mito and Asuna flanked left and right. Neo covered the rear — the position that gave him the widest field of observation on everyone else.
He'd been running [Detection] at regular intervals since the third turn. The skill had earned its keep: three pressure-plate traps and a concealed spawn trigger, all skipped cleanly before anyone stepped into range.
He ran it again. The result came back clean.
Ahead, the tunnel opened.
Lisbeth slowed as the walls retreated on both sides, the torchlight expanding outward to fill a circular chamber. The ceiling rose. The air changed — less compressed, carrying the faint smell of something animal and old.
In the center of the clearing, a single figure stood.
A humanoid shape, broader than the standard «Ruin Kobold» frame, built like something that had been designed to hit rather than scurry. Its equipment confirmed it: a crude axe, head the size of a large plate, hung from one hand. A rough hide vest. Legs wrapped in layered cloth strips.
«Ruin Kobold Trooper»
It hadn't noticed them yet. It was pacing in a slow, irregular circuit around the chamber's center — the restless energy of something that guarded without knowing why.
"Halt," Neo said quietly.
They stopped just inside the threshold, shadow still covering them.
"That's the one we're after?" Asuna asked, voice low.
"It should be carrying the «Tempered Stone Fragment»," Mito confirmed. "Though we have no way to verify until we confirm the drop."
He ran [Detection] one more time — full sweep, wall to wall, ceiling included. The result came back the same as before.
Clean.
A common «Ruin Kobold Trooper» sat at minimum level six. Against four players with the element of surprise, a coordinated damage burst should end the fight before the mob recovers from the opening strike. Math was on their side.
"It's clear," he said.
"Then we move in," responded Mito. "The sooner we're gone from this place, the better."
The three advanced through the threshold.
Neo didn't.
He stayed at the junction; even when hesitation wasn't his style.
An old feeling saluted him: instincts that had kept him alive in corridors, server farms that had never existed in this world while fighting the machine domination. The suspicion that something wasn't right, even when every instrument he had said otherwise.
[Detection] had flagged nothing. And he trusted the skill. He'd been trusting it for the past day or so.
He assessed the chamber again. The placement was too clean — a single mob, alone, in open ground, directly on the route the quest demanded. No pack support. No environmental hazard. Nothing suggested the space had been designed to be difficult. Just a target, waiting.
Gift-wrapped.
His eyes went up.
A fracture line ran across the ceiling at the threshold — the narrowest structural point where the tunnel became a chamber. It was barely visible: a dark seam in the rock, the color slightly warmer than the uniform gray around it. The kind of detail that registered as texture and nothing more, unless you were already looking for it.
His eyes dropped to the floor.
The stone at the threshold was a slightly different shade from the rest of the passage. The join between the two surfaces was too smooth — not worn smooth by foot traffic, but fitted. Placed.
His three party members were standing on it.
"WAI– "
The fracture in the ceiling widened.
They won't be able to dodge it.
His legs went white.
[Street Charge]
He didn't cross his arms into the skill's standard activation form. The motion input wasn't strictly required for «Hand-to-Hand Combat» — that was the mechanical quirk he'd found in the Beta and quietly kept to himself. That way, he could use it for pure acceleration, no attack arc.
What happened next would be deeply undignified in any other context.
Neo's arms swept back. His torso pitched forward, hair streaming back, as if he were a man who had made several terrible decisions simultaneously and committed to all of them.
Mito, who registered the American's absence, had approximately one-quarter of a second to take in what she was seeing before it became irrelevant.
She would later struggle to describe it accurately because the human mind is not built to process the image of a composed, analytically minded teenager hurling toward her like an anime character depicting "going fast":
A Naruto Run.
Two white-glowing hands hooked under the back collars of her and Asuna's equipment in the same instant — and then the threshold was behind her, the tunnel floor was rising to meet her, and she was airborne for one undignified half-second before landing hard on the passage ground.
CRACKLE — CRACK — CRACKLE
The sound filled the cave like a thunderclap, the kind that meant something was breaking that had no intention of stopping. Above the threshold, the fracture tore open in a single motion, and the ceiling came down: slab after slab, a full cascade of stone that obliterated the passage entrance in a few seconds.
Mito hit the dirt shoulder-first, rolled, and came up on one knee. Her scythe was still in hand through sheer trained reflex. Asuna had caught herself on her forearms, rapier out, already twisting to assess the threat.
The ceiling of the threshold was no longer a ceiling.
A cloud of dust rose, enveloping them both.
When it settled, the entrance to the chamber was sealed with several hundred kilograms of rock.
The group was cut in half.
"...Asuna." Mito was already moving, pulling a second torch from her inventory. Crossed the two steps between them and gripped Asuna's shoulder briefly — a comfort gesture. "Are you OK?"
"Yes." Asuna's voice was steady, if slightly breathless. She was already standing, hand pressed against the rubble, assessing. "You?"
"Fine," The Scythe-wielder exhaled once and turned towards the newly formed wall. "Neo! Lisbeth!"
She hard knocked on the rocks and listened.
A muffled but clear male voice came back: "Yeah! We got lucky here!"
"Liz!" Asuna had moved beside her, voice raised.
Neo said 'it was clear', Mito mused. So, how did this happen?
On the other side of the wall, Lisbeth hadn't uttered a word.
Not because she was injured — her health bar sat at full, some of the impact absorbed by the body that had wrapped itself around her from behind and carried her forward and down in the same motion, shoulder dropping to take the contact with the ground so she didn't have to.
She was aware, in a distant way, that this was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that she had nearly been killed and had not been.
That wasn't her primary thought.
The torch had rolled a meter ahead of them, still lit, its flame wavering in the disturbed air. It threw long shadows across the stone floor and caught the dust motes still drifting from the collapse.
Neo had already begun to move — or rather, she became aware that he had stopped moving, which was when she registered that he had been surrounding her at all.
His weight shifted. The contact across her back — his arms, his chest, the warmth of another person in a game that kept insisting it was real — withdrew as he pushed himself upright.
And with that came the absence. More noticeable than she expected.
His hand was over mine too, she thought, without entirely meaning to.
The more she replayed the last seconds, the less she was able to think about anything practical.
He had tackled her. Across a dungeon floor. And she had been aware the entire time of every single—
"Liz?!" Asuna's voice came through the rock wall, sharp with worry.
"Y-yes!" Lisbeth's voice returned. She grabbed the torch, rose to her feet, and managed to sound like a person who had not just been derailed by mere physical contact. "Just surprised — I'm all right!"
"Kkhhrr… kkhhrr…"
The «Ruin Kobold Trooper» had registered the collapse. It had stopped its circuit around the chamber, axe held in hand, yellow eyes catching the torchlight. It moved the way large things move when they aren't afraid — slowly, deliberately, letting the distance communicate the threat.
The axe was the size of Lisbeth's torso. Two clean hits from something that heavy, and her health bar might not survive.
Neo was standing between her and it.
"Lisbeth," he said.
"Ah — yes?" Her skin turned pale after piecing her — their dire situation.
"Keep Mito and Asuna updated." He hadn't looked back. His eyes were on the monster, reading it; weight distribution. Grip on the weapon. Whether the first step would be a lunge or a sweep.
"Right," she managed. "And you–?"
He rolled his shoulders once, loose and deliberate. His arms came up into his fighting stance — the one she still couldn't fully account for, no matter how many times she watched it.
"I will blow some frustration… with that thing," he said, already moving forward to close the distance on his terms rather than the Kobold's.
"HGHRR—" The mob raised its axe.
Neo launched himself forward.