The two allied parties, forty players in all, marched solemnly into the depths of the Labyrinth Tower.
A massive pair of double doors blocked their way. Everyone found themselves looking up at the gray surface, made from some unknown material. Carved and inlaid across it were savage beastmen, their twisted reliefs interwoven so tightly that just looking at them almost made it seem like roaring was echoing in the air.
Demihuman monsters counted as powerful enemies even in this game, because they too had been given the right to use Sword Skills.
The game's only means of combat.
"Today, all we need to handle are the mobs around the boss. They're still strong enemies, of course, but if we avoid those large metal armor plates, we can still deal effective damage."
"So we can only aim for the throat?" Satoru asked quietly.
"Right... One of us knocks their axe aside, and the other attacks."
In the end, their little three-man squad was assigned to deal with the mobs. That wasn't a bad thing. At least in Satoru's mind, safety came first.
As far as he was concerned, any player who survived this battle would go on to become one of the game's leading figures. Diavel was one of them. He would keep carrying the burden of leadership. Once someone had come this far, the question of how they died became secondary.
Of course, none of that responsibility had anything to do with Satoru.
"Let's come back victorious!"
At the front of the fully assembled force, Diavel, the commander of this raid, raised his longsword high like a blazing banner.
"Move out!"
The doors were shoved open.
...
Everyone poured inside.
The first thing that hit them was the sheer size of the battlefield. It was large enough to rival the plaza in the Town of Beginnings. In the darkness before the room was fully lit, the space felt even deeper and more unfathomable, and the white map in the upper right corner looked especially huge.
There was no way that kind of layout was meaningless.
Which meant...
The enemy waiting for them had to be monstrously large.
Whoosh—Whoosh—Whoosh.
The torches set into the walls on both sides ignited on their own, one after another. The fire spread from the entrance where they stood, lighting the chamber farther and farther in, until it reached the far end nearly a hundred meters away.
There, directly ahead of them, was a brilliantly gleaming throne.
Every eye locked onto the huge figure sitting on it.
As the footsteps of the forty players echoed through the room, the Kobold on the throne slowly opened its eyes, revealing a pair of vicious, crimson-glowing pupils.
Diavel swung his sword down toward it.
No more stirring commands were needed. This was the full assault.
The forty-four frontline players in the raid let out a united shout and charged with weapons in hand. Seen from above, they looked like a mass of dark points rushing at the king on the throne.
"Aaaaargh!!!"
Its bloodthirsty eyes flew wide. Reflecting the crowd before it, the motionless beast suddenly leaped up, even twisting in midair before slamming down with savage force. The impact shook the chamber, and its wolf-like jaws opened as wide as they could, releasing a brutal howl.
For now, Satoru decided, he'd call it the Illfang the Kobold Lord.
Brown-based color. A sturdy body over two meters tall. Eyes hungry for blood. A gigantic bone-forged axe in its right hand, and a leather-covered shield in its left.
It suddenly raised the giant axe and brought it down toward Team A, the closest group. The flash of a Sword Skill burst out, and when weapons collided, the noise was so violent it made the ground tremble. That first exchange was like a signal. Small openings in the high walls on both sides burst open, and armored beasts came leaping down.
Team E and the support Team G quickly moved to intercept them, keeping them away from the main force. Satoru's squad was assigned the last one.
There was no need to discuss the battle plan again. They had already gone over every detail beforehand, and in Argo's strategy guide, the difficulty of the boss's final phase had been described with exhausting care.
"Switch!" Kirito shouted as he put all his strength into knocking the heavy axe of the armored guard aside, creating a perfect opening.
Satoru was just about to move when the cloaked rapier user at his side, who had barely spoken the entire time, suddenly darted forward.
No—lunged was the right word.
Not just the sword. The whole body.
Leaning sharply forward, like a needle driving straight ahead, the rapier user streaked past Satoru and past the retreating Kirito. In the instant before impact, the sword flashed.
Linear.
Just the most basic rapier skill.
And yet the force and speed with which it pierced the air and punched straight through the exposed throat of the armored guard felt like something from a top-tier skill.
No, even the flashy visual effects that usually decorated Sword Skills couldn't keep up with the tip of that rapier. There wasn't even time to be amazed. All that burned into the eye was the pure gleam of a single slender blade.
The burst of light at the guard's throat scattered like exploding stardust.
So fast.
In the end, all the admiration in the world could only be reduced to those two words.
Even Kirito looked startled. He'd already seen it back in the Labyrinth, but no matter how many times he watched, that speed still felt beyond the system's assistance.
Beautiful and lethal, like a meteor falling from the sky.
The armored guard staggered back and roared in frustration.
But it wouldn't get another chance.
An orange-red curved blade left an afterimage as it came down. Satoru dashed in. When he landed, he didn't use a skill. He simply swung. The accumulated damage had already reached the kill threshold, and with a burst of scattering fragments, the guard broke apart into data.
"GJ," Kirito murmured.
He wasn't just praising the rapier user. He was praising Satoru too. The timing of that follow-up had been perfect, and the fact that he hadn't wasted another skill after that showed exactly how well he understood damage.
The fighting on the other side was even fiercer. As Diavel shouted hoarsely, "Second bar!" another guard crashed down from the wall.
It was only then that Satoru realized the rapier user's hood had fallen back, revealing long brown hair. From the angle he couldn't see her face clearly, but with that slender build and that soft, feminine hair, he'd have to be blind not to realize she was a female player.
Oh...
No wonder Kirito had teamed up with her.
Kids.
He still had enough room in his mind to think that.
And yet the three of them were killing guards faster than Team E, even though Team E had a full six-man lineup for the same job. Kirito created the opening, the rapier user delivered the precise killing thrust, and Satoru handled the easy finish.
Fighting alongside strong players was genuinely enjoyable.
A brief cheer rose from the front lines. They'd probably just barely pushed the fight into the kill phase.
Which only made sense. This whole group was taking on the raid at nearly double the recommended level.
Satoru couldn't help turning to look.
The Illfang's HP bar was down to its final crimson line. As if it had sensed death closing in, it jumped back, arrogantly tossing away the axe in its right hand and the small shield in its left. Then, in a startlingly human gesture, it reached behind its waist and drew a long curved blade.
All six members of Team C immediately closed in around it.
And this time, their formation was completely different from when it had been using the axe and those sweeping horizontal attacks.
A very smart call.
Was victory... really that close?
Satoru stared at the boss's dwindling HP with mixed emotions. Sweat gathered in the hand gripping his curved blade. Something lurking in the back of his mind was starting to stir, and before he knew it, he was calculating damage, weighing risk against reward.
The final blow.
If he wanted to steal it... it wasn't impossible.
What mattered was how the other players would react afterward.
His grip tightened slightly.
Then what froze him was the strangled shout from behind him, a desperate warning forced through a constricted throat.
"Get out of there! Everyone, jump back!"
Satoru only had time to recognize it as Kirito's voice before every other sound was swallowed by the howl of the Illfang's massive Sword Skill.
The giant two-meter body slammed off the ground and shot straight into the air. It twisted in midflight, taking on a posture that looked like it was gathering all the force of a huge downward blade strike into a single moment, ready to unleash overwhelming damage the instant it landed.
A blade-type Sword Skill. Heavy area attack. Whirlwind?
Satoru, who had squeezed every bit of information Argo could provide about the complicated system of Sword Skills before coming here, felt a chill crawl down his back.
According to the beta guidebook, it did not have this move.
Six crimson arcs exploded outward like blood spraying through the air. In Satoru's view, every member of Team C had their green HP bars slashed down by about half in an instant, dropping straight into yellow. Worse, all six were hit with a status ailment.
Paralysis.
They collapsed to the ground, their bodies only able to twitch faintly as they stared wide-eyed at the Illfang and its huge blade.
The counterattack had gone far beyond anyone's expectations. Before the fight, everyone had been so convinced this raid would succeed that now, with disaster suddenly in front of them...
The players around Team C were so stunned they forgot to do anything at all.
"You idiots!"
The furious roar came from the edge of the battlefield.
From Satoru.
A wide-range stun attack like that meant the boss was guaranteed to have end lag afterward. Before it recovered, they could either protect the paralyzed players or attack the boss.
That was basic game sense.
The orange-red light of Reaver became his means of closing the distance. There was a long stretch between him and the center of the fight, but Satoru didn't hold back. He burned a skill just to move faster, rushing desperately toward the Illfang as the monster slowly regained its grip on the blade in both hands.
"Grrrraaaah!"
The wild cry rumbled from the Illfang's throat as its nodachi-like weapon swept across the ground.
I'll make it!
The long blade was wrapped in red light once more, the sign that the blade-type combo skill Floating Leaf Slash was about to activate. Compared to that, Satoru's own curved blade, lit in a faint orange-red glow, looked pitifully narrow and dim.
But that didn't matter.
He only had to stop the skill from going off.
Rather than clashing with the Illfang, it was more like Satoru threw himself into that nodachi. He used the curved blade that had always been at his side like a shield, pressing the flat of it tight against his body to protect himself as much as possible.
The next instant, steel shattered.
Weapon destroyed.
Even with its durability strengthened, his plain curved blade still turned into a cloud of data without the slightest suspense.
By all rights, both sides should have been forced into stiffness, since both of their skills had been interrupted before they fully went off.
But he was the one whose weapon had been destroyed.
The Illfang bared its wolfish maw in a vicious grin. Locking onto Satoru, whose feet had been lifted off the ground by the force of the collision, it still completed the activation of Floating Leaf Slash.
Which meant the second-stage follow-up was coming next.
And after that, even adding Crimson Arc for fatal damage wasn't impossible.
Did it sense the sign of its prey's death?
There was something almost eager in those eyes. Calling it AI felt too simple, but saying it was just programmed behavior felt too detailed.
Heh.
Satoru laughed under his breath as he met its gaze.
This counted as danger, didn't it?
But it wasn't like the old reality where all he could do was accept what came.
This was a game.
A game where effort could matter.
If he couldn't force a stiffness, then a follow-up would be hard. But nobody had ever said he couldn't use them at the same time.
Right. All he had to do was take one more step forward.
For someone with ordinary talent, this was the only step he could take. And that single step was the trump card he had been saving.
As for why he had dared to block the attack, it wasn't because he wanted to save his teammates.
If he had to give a reason, then if they died, if Diavel died with them, the momentum of the assault would weaken.
Use them.
That was all.
Yes. Use them.
He repeated it to himself in his heart.
Satoru raised both hands in the air even as he lost his balance, his fingers moving in the gesture to call up the system menu.
"I'm taking the last hit."
His face was pale, drenched in cold sweat, but the words came out with a cold smile, more arrogant than the Illfang's roar.
He instantly ran through the information in his head, the second-stage follow-up of Floating Leaf Slash, the combo chain into Crimson Arc.
"I can do it."
"So you're my idiot little sister's son? They really just dumped you here and walked away, huh... But don't expect me to take care of you. Back then... I told her not to do it."
"Hey! Every customer we've had is complaining! You should get the hell out now while you still can! Nobody's going to hire you!"
"What a shame... We don't put much value on education, but you... you didn't even finish middle school. I'm sorry. Please look elsewhere."
His hand touched one of the buttons on the virtual menu.
"Uoooooh!"
The shout didn't come from him.
It came from behind him, as a brutal two-handed axe skill smashed into the fight.
Satoru's hand stopped.
He hit the ground and looked up.
The one who had charged in was the leader of Team B, the huge, broad-shouldered Agil.
"Thanks! You bought us the split second we needed!"
"..."
A deafening battle cry burst from the players who had snapped back to their senses. Members of Teams A and D all surged in, covering the paralyzed Team C and Satoru, whose HP had already been cut down by a third.
"I owe you my life."
Still struggling to stand, with paralysis not yet fully gone, Diavel looked at Satoru.
"..."
No need.
I wasn't saving you.
Satoru got to his feet without saying a word, but his legs gave a slight stumble.
"Tch..."
The sound that escaped him was full of frustration.
So in the end, I'm still scared.