They said every fifth floor was a watershed, but by the actual pattern, the truly dramatic leaps in a floor boss's strength came at 25, 50, 75, and 100.
The boss on this floor shouldn't have been this strong. But no one's attention was on why the Floor 65 boss was so powerful.
Immortal Object.
An immortality that came from the system itself—something most players had never once laid eyes on. Probably only a rare few among the beta testers had ever been lucky enough to see it, on a GM... that is, a developer account.
"What's the meaning of this, Commander Heathcliff? So the reason you never touched the Rat Stew was because of this? And that little girl even had a special recipe you've been hiding from us—how selfish can you get!"
Someone's train of thought ran a little differently from everyone else's.
You couldn't really blame him, though. Ever since Yimi started cooking, the Knights of the Blood had developed all kinds of bizarre buffs, so it hardly seemed strange that even a revival item like the Rat Stew, reviving you with half HP, existed at all.
But over here there was someone who had been watching Heathcliff every moment.
Before fighting a boss, the Clearers always took about a minute to eat. A minute was maybe a bit too short, but buff durations were limited to begin with, and they certainly couldn't make the ones who finished first wait that long, so in recent days the Clearers had basically all trained up a set of speed-eating techniques.
Throughout this time, Kirito had kept watching Heathcliff; what the man ate was nothing more than the most basic stat-boosting buff.
"The answer's pretty obvious by now, isn't it? I kept wondering where he was—and sure enough, rather than spectating some large-scale game livestream that doesn't even have a protagonist, taking part in it yourself is the only way to keep from being bored, right?"
Kirito looked straight at the man standing before them as their leader. "Kayaba Akihiko."
Heathcliff... or rather, Kayaba Akihiko, called up his menu and made two inputs, and the HP bar of the boss that had just been swaggering about instantly bottomed out, leaving in the vast arena nothing but a crowd of Clearers who had yet to react.
"Did our last duel tip you off? This spot being exposed genuinely caught me a little off guard. When I designed this floor's boss, there shouldn't have been so many bugs—did last year's game crash really cause this many problems after all?"
"Does that count as an admission? Kayaba Akihiko!" The Knights of the Blood stared in shock and fury at this once-revered man.
One of them chose to simply forget the marker from moments ago, raised his blade, and charged. "Is this some kind of joke? What do you take our loyalty and trust for!"
Kayaba Akihiko gave no answer; he tapped the menu again and inflicted a mass paralysis on everyone.
"I see. Even without a mishap like this, you'd likely have discovered my identity on your own before long. Dual Blades is granted after Floor 50 to the player with the fastest reactions—by my design, the hero meant to strike down the Demon King."
He released Kirito's paralysis alone.
"Let me give you a reward, Kirito. Defeat me here. Of course, I'll remove my own immortality; likewise, you'll have only a single life to use. If you can pull it off, I'll hand over the data for every floor to come, free of charge."
Originally Heathcliff had actually meant to say something like "beat me and you can all go back," but recalling the buff on his opponent that he couldn't delete even with administrator privileges, he changed his wording to information instead.
He said all floors, not merely bosses and Labyrinths—meaning all the intel, field bosses, hidden items, and maps included, could be had for free just by defeating him. That already amounted to outright cheating; it sounded no different from simply sending everyone straight out.
What was the point of this?
Kirito didn't quite get it. Was Kayaba Akihiko so afraid of loneliness? Or was it that...
Asuna tried to talk him out of it. "Kirito, there's no need to do this here..."
"Sure. A one-on-one duel. As it happens, I thought last time was unfair—the result should rightly have been my win, no?"
Kirito lowered his head and glanced at the two paired swords, one black and one white.
Elucidator was the reward from the Floor 50 boss; the other was Dark Repulser, forged with the help of a friend of Asuna's. And also...
"Klein, I'm really sorry about last year. I've been regretting what happened back then this whole time."
"What are you suddenly going on about, you punk? Who's blaming you!"
"Agil, I know all about it—the dirty money you earned, you funneled every bit of it into raising mid-tier and higher players, didn't you?"
"Then don't go calling it dirty money..."
He clearly assumed the 'single life' Kayaba Akihiko spoke of meant stripping away all the buffs on his body—in which case the battle between them would no longer be a pure duel, but a plain life-or-death struggle.
"Asuna, I'm leaving the two children to you."
"Idiot, don't say stuff like that..."
But before that, in another sense, he first had to die once.
Kirito took a deep breath and, before everyone's eyes, opened his menu, called up the trump-card costume he'd prepared solely for grinding levels, and tapped equip.
His usual black outfit, which had scarcely ever changed, was swapped out, and paired with flowing long hair it looked more like a sleek outfit made for looks than clothing suited to battle.
"Hey, you—?" Klein's mouth fell open; he wanted to point a hand at him but couldn't move because of the paralysis.
"You've got to be kidding me!"
"My first love!!"
Who's your first love!
Kayaba Akihiko was a touch surprised as well. "What a bold getup. It seems the bonuses on that outfit must be quite good."
All around came a murmuring babble, and even, it seemed, the sound of a heart or two breaking—after all, in a single day they'd learned they'd been deceived twice.
That was no longer Kirito's problem; it had taken him enormous courage to put on this outfit in a setting like this to begin with.
This match he had to win no matter what, so here he would pour out everything he had.
"Let's begin."
Using his system privileges to refill both sides' HP to full, Kayaba Akihiko lifted the system's restrictions, and the instant the duel began, Kirito unleashed a powerful, ferocious offensive.
Because the Rat Stew's bonus was simply too fierce, and on top of that there was the outfit whose effects he hadn't had time to check, Kayaba Akihiko had in fact, with that operation just now, temporarily bumped his own level up by ten—only then was it a little fairer.
Using Holy Sword's exclusive property, which allowed his shield to be used offensively as well, he knocked Kirito back while landing a momentary hard stun on him. And this was merely one minor skill of Holy Sword.
A blade pierced through Kirito's body, and his HP bar, healthy a moment before, instantly dropped a huge chunk. Everyone broke into a cold sweat for him, with no room now to mourn or admire a shattered first love.
If he didn't give it his all, he really would die!
Kirito knocked Kayaba Akihiko's blade aside and flowed seamlessly into the stance for a skill.
The Eclipse!
This was the highest-tier sword skill of Dual Blades—one that even Kirito had only been able to use for a short while.
Like black butterflies dancing after the fall of ruin, his clanging, forceful strikes hammered against the shield, landing a full 27-hit combo before the dumbstruck onlookers.
If he couldn't strike the man himself directly, all he could do was grind down the durability of his weapon.
Even with a baseline ten levels higher, Kayaba Akihiko still couldn't overpower Kirito by the numbers. He calmly analyzed how to counter it in his mind—then watched Kirito's HP bar instantly refill to full under this ultimate sword skill.
"?"
Even without striking Heathcliff himself, the drain on the shield's durability had still triggered Kirito's lifesteal attribute.