"Did you hear? The boss room on Floor 65 has already been found."
"Eh? We've only explored about a third of this floor's Labyrinth, haven't we? Didn't they say every fifth floor is a watershed? To be safe, shouldn't we grind our levels up a bit more first?"
"Forget it. I don't want to spend one extra minute on this floor."
"Damn it!" A sudden shout pulled the gazes of everyone in the conversation over.
"What's wrong, boss?"
"A buddy of mine in the Knights of the Blood sent me word that their Vice Commander has already confirmed a marriage with that Dual Blades guy!" This guild leader clutched at his chest, grinding his teeth.
In this game, where female players were few and beauties among them rarer still, Asuna's popularity within the Clearers ranked, solidly and without exaggeration, at the very top.
"Ha... it's a real shame. But you've never once spoken to her, boss. Beating your chest here does nothing except make you look like a monkey that struck out at courtship." His snarky friend didn't grant him a shred of face.
"Oh, shut it. I'm just feeling a little sentimental, that's all." The guild leader coughed twice.
A man shouldn't hang himself on a single tree. It was only that, whenever he saw a beauty, beyond simple admiration, the thought that he might never in this life share any connection with her always left a hollow sort of loss.
But compared to the unreachable Clearing Demon, the one more popular now was, sure enough...
"Fwsh——"
The blade slicing through the air, along with the special-effect sound of a monster shattering apart, drew the guild leader's gaze that way despite himself. He saw the very girl he'd just been picturing in his mind farming the Labyrinth alone, as always, wielding that one-handed sword with crisp precision—even besieged by a swarm of ghosts and scarecrows, stubbornly refusing to let the HP bar drop to the yellow line.
He was still afraid of being recognized, so he definitely couldn't draw a second sword; besides, a single one-handed sword was more than enough anyway.
Even before the Dual Blades swordsman, "the black-clad one-handed swordsman of the Clearers who carried no shield" had already earned quite a bit of fame. His current look wasn't actually all that out of place, though. True, the perk of a one-handed sword was that you could carry a shield too, but having a female player lug a shield around would look a little unsightly...
Of course, that kind of princess-like fussiness was fairly rare among the Clearers—but then again, no one in the Clearers had seen his current self anyway, right?
Having cleared a wave of small fry and topped off the last sliver of his EXP bar to gain a level, Kirito let out a long breath, sheathed his sword, and got ready to hurry off to the Floor 65 boss strategy meeting.
"Please wait!" The guild leader behind him boldly took a step forward and called out to stop him. "Don't go yet. Do you still remember me? You saved me once before."
After hearing that Asuna was married, he'd finally worked it out: if he didn't take the initiative and step forward, he'd forever be nothing but a single man moping over a beautiful girl he admired but might never trade a single word with.
Kirito stopped for the moment and gave him a puzzled glance.
"My name's Roger. Could you tell me your name? Uh... I mean, could I treat you to a meal, as thanks for last time?"
What was this supposed to be?
Kirito looked away and apologized in a small voice. "Sorry. I'm already married."
Married...
...arried...
...ied...
Even a good while after Kirito had run off, the guild leader still hadn't recovered from the pleasant smile he'd kept fixed in place—having traded a moment's boldness for who knew how long of renewed timidity.
...
"Clang——"
Beneath Floor 1 there was a hidden dungeon that only unlocked after reaching a certain floor, which was why it had gone undiscovered all this time.
The Clearers were preoccupied with conquering the upper floors, and most of those who chose to live on Floor 1 were players who didn't even want to join in grinding monsters. The ones with the best chance of finding this dungeon were The Army, the former main Clearer guild formed by merging two into one.
A death god wielding a scythe in appearance, with strength above Floor 90—this was the guardian barring the way to the console of the GM Emergency Login System: the Fatal Scythe. And yet even it could gain no advantage before Yimi's sheer Adaptive Power in this world.
All she had to do was make a few motions to trigger the special effects. Running into such a beating-resistant monster for the first time in this world, Yimi simply used it to experiment with her own moves.
In truth she'd completely thrown out the Insect Glaive techniques and was just swinging wildly, yet with the boost of the special effects it somehow came out looking passably impressive.
"Yimi, stop playing around." Yui, standing far behind her, called out.
Actually it wouldn't have mattered if she hadn't stood back, because even if the Fatal Scythe swung its scythe at her, it would only trigger a "non-attackable target" warning.
"Okay."
Yimi swung the glaive shaft, longer than she was tall, out straight and shouted, "Spear That Pierced the Lord!"
She hadn't actually released a true Noble Phantasm, but once she called it out, this world's Adaptive Power still helped her complete the release effect—a straight lance of light that filled most of the dungeon corridor pierced clean through the Fatal Scythe, shaving away the just-under-half HP it had left entirely.
Kaido-sensei had taught her right: you have to shout the move's name out loud. Though it wasn't as cool as a real Noble Phantasm release.
"The room up ahead is the one." Yui pointed forward, then curled her finger back in.
"But before that—Yimi, you must be Cardinal's incarnation, right?" Coming back to this topic, Yui's expression turned serious once more.
Because by the rules, a program like Yui was absolutely forbidden to interfere with the GM Emergency Login System; the moment she did, the consequence was erasure by Cardinal.
By the same token, pulling her out of that sealed-off corner and repairing her already-collapsed program was something only Cardinal could do—short of a programmer spending time rewriting the code by hand.
If Yimi were merely some other program she wasn't aware of, she too would very likely be erased by Cardinal for breaking the rules.
"What Cardinal?" Yimi had never even heard of it.
That didn't stop her from having already darted into the room, so empty it held nothing but a single stone platform.
Kirito and Asuna were good to her, and they were all fellow sufferers who couldn't go home. Even though the kitty herself couldn't get home for now, she was willing to do them this one favor.
"Wait..."
Before Yui could stop her, Yimi laid her hand on the stone platform, which came nearly up to her chest, and a keyboard of light and shadow abruptly appeared.
Yimi recognized this thing, of course. Her grandma used to have one of those things that folded open and shut and had a keyboard too; it was often warm on top, and Yimi loved to flop across it, though she'd usually get shooed away by Grandma.
"How do you use this?"
"Yimi should be able to just use this directly, though." Yui looked at her, not understanding.
"Mm..." Yimi reached out and started mashing the keyboard at random.
"Wait, stop right now!" Yui rushed to stop her, but it was already a touch too late.
In the Floor 65 boss room, the Clearer members, led by Heathcliff, were mounting their assault on the boss. A floor that should have worn them down was still being handled with ease under the Rat Stew buff—a difficulty that had already strayed from what Heathcliff had anticipated.
Not that it mattered. With that kind of attitude, his Clearers would sooner or later pay for it down the road—for instance, from Floor 75 on, the difficulty would start turning into something like hell mode.
As expected, this boss too was going so smoothly it was boring.
Just as Heathcliff was thinking this while raising his shield to guard, something strange suddenly came over the boss—a single swipe sent Heathcliff flying and, even with his shield up, still shaved away a quarter of his HP.
"Commander!"
Heathcliff: "?"
He was quite certain he hadn't added any forced-knockback function when he designed this boss—how could a horror-themed boss possibly have a forced-knockback function?
"You can't do that—you'll interfere with the system!" On the other side, Yui pointed at Yimi and scolded her.
"But you didn't say how you wanted me to do it." Yimi sulked.
Again Yui didn't get it. "You should already know how, though."
Even she, under her own control, could exercise part of the administrator privileges—though the moment she did, she risked being erased.
That Yimi could mash the keys now with nothing happening to her seemed proof enough that she truly was Cardinal.
But Yui's words had shaken the little cat's confidence, and she tried tapping a few more keys.
Cutting the view back to Floor 65, the boss—which up to now had only been popping in and out unpredictably—abruptly launched a high-mobility attack, swinging down at Asuna under her stunned expression.
A single swipe refilled her HP bar to full.
"..."
Something was wrong with this boss, but no one could say quite what—had it bugged out?
"That's not right, that's not right." Yui was still muttering off to the side.
"You keep saying it's not right, but you won't tell me how to make it right." Displeased, Yimi reached out a paw and patted the keyboard.
The next second, on Floor 65 the boss, which had locked onto Heathcliff as its target, unleashed a skill that should only appear in its second phase, ignoring his raised shield and dropping him straight to half HP.
At the same time, Heathcliff's administrator life-saving mechanism triggered.
The air went utterly still as everyone stared, unblinking, at the marker above his head.