"Everyone, fall back toward the exit! As long as we don't surround it, that area attack won't trigger!"
Team C, who had barely survived, struggled back to their feet. Diavel immediately raised his voice and resumed command. His nerve really was something else. Even after brushing shoulders with death, he could still force himself to calm down and assess the situation.
If he hadn't, the forty-man raid force would've fallen into chaos, and the result would still have been catastrophic casualties.
"We've cleared both waves of guards! All eyes on the boss!"
Illfang's HP had already dropped into its final half. Maybe if everyone rushed it at once, they could burst it down in a single push. But the Kobold Lord stood there with its nodachi in hand, grinding its jaws and sweeping its gaze over them with cold, oppressive menace. The terrifying power of its earlier Whirlwind was enough to make anyone hesitate.
At a time like this, nobody had the spare focus to wonder whether the boss AI would erupt into some near-bestial last-ditch frenzy at the end of Phase 4.
Then, with both sides locked in a tense standoff, Illfang suddenly threw its head back and roared. Its right hand drew the nodachi back to its waist as if sliding it into an invisible sheath, taking a strikingly human iaijutsu stance.
Another Sword Skill.
Linear Slash, a long-range linear slash. If you realized what it was only after it started, there was no dodging it.
Satoru recognized it instantly and tried to move, but his HP bar in the upper left still hadn't fully recovered. His body froze on instinct. If he made even the slightest mistake...
That attack would wipe out the rest of his life.
"...!!"
The moment green light flared at the Kobold Lord's waist, the one who finally lunged forward without hesitation was Kirito.
His roar collided with the boss's as his one-handed sword swept up from the left and slammed into the nodachi's path. A sharp, piercing clang burst through the room, followed by a shower of sparks like lightning. Both Kirito and Illfang were forced back more than two meters, and both entered stiffness.
His weapon hadn't shattered. Was that because his timing had been closer to perfect?
Before anyone needed to call for a switch, the rapier user in their party was already moving. Brown hair streamed through the heavy air as she gave a short, sharp cry, completely unlike Kirito's. Her rapier seemed to stretch as the glowing tip shot across the distance and buried itself deep in Illfang's abdomen.
A tiny amount, but unmistakably, the boss's remaining HP dropped again.
"Ooooooh!!"
That tiny victory was enough to reignite everyone's courage. Anyone with more than half their HP left stepped forward with everything they had.
"How many skills does it even have?" Satoru asked between breaths.
"That should be all of them. If it has more than this, that's just absurd. As long as we don't trigger Whirlwind, we can do this."
Diavel grit his teeth.
"As for the rest... we just have to interrupt them when we can. Our people, even the tank-build players, are almost at their limit. If we can't finish this within ten minutes, it's going to get dangerous."
"Then I'm counting on your side to intercept its skills." Diavel looked at Kirito with dim, resigned eyes, as if he'd already accepted something.
There was no time to think about why he'd suddenly looked so down.
Satoru pulled out another scimitar and equipped it. His eyes drifted to the Anneal Blade lying quietly in his inventory, the reward he'd gotten from that housewife at the end of the Yerika Village questline. It was classified as a one-handed straight sword, so in theory it wasn't much use to a curved sword user like him.
If he wanted to test it, this was still too dangerous a place.
Satoru muttered that to himself.
"Hah..."
Back in the August closed beta, the testers had eventually reached the tenth floor, but none of them ever got to see that floor's boss. In the end, almost no one could break through the samurai-type demi-human monsters guarding the "Thousand Snake Castle". They used blade skills so refined that players themselves couldn't replicate them, and fighting them was as difficult as fighting another player.
After countless deaths and an equal amount of stubborn determination, Kirito had at least managed to memorize their attack trajectories and telegraphs.
The Kobold Lord's nodachi wasn't the same as those samurai's tachi, but the skills it used were very similar. Kirito kept dragging up knowledge from that long-ago experience and countering it with canceling skills.
But that level of concentration couldn't be sustained forever. Fifteen or sixteen uses in a row was enough to drain him dry.
On top of that, the boss's stats far exceeded all of theirs. Just one clash brought real feedback damage, and the numbness in his arms from the recoil wasn't an illusion.
Kirito canceled the Vertical slash he had started, but he was already too late. He'd predicted Illfang would attack from a high stance, yet after drawing a half-moon arc, the threat came from below.
He desperately tried to yank his sword arm back, but cold spread through his whole body, like he'd been plunged into an ice cellar.
There was no pain, no overwhelming sense of discomfort, but he had definitely been cut by the nodachi.
The proof was the thirty percent missing from his HP bar.
Illfang's... Crimson Arc!
Launched into the air, Kirito could only curl his body as tightly as he could to reduce the damage as much as possible.
But the curved sword user who'd been watching for exactly this opening finally stepped in. His entry was like a steel needle slipping into a set of spinning gears, and a fatal gap opened in the Illfang's combo.
Satoru hadn't attacked before Illfang activated its skill. He'd waited until Kirito had already taken the first hit, because interrupting a skill mid-execution was far easier than stopping it before it started.
"Aaaaaah!!"
Crimson Arc was interrupted.
Kirito hit the ground in a rough sprawl.
"Linear Slash and Crimson Arc are on you," Satoru said to him.
Kirito's face had gone pale.
"...Got it."
Agil's six-man party took on the role of pure tanks. They didn't waste energy trying to make perfect blocks. They simply committed to blocking with weapons and shields, rotating through the damage one by one. Each of their HP bars steadily fell while Satoru and Kirito locked the boss down as tightly as they could.
The instant Illfang showed any sign of trying to activate a skill, one of them would step in to intercept it.
Still, Satoru had only been in this game for a month. He made two mistakes, and both times Kirito bailed him out.
All the damage was left to the rapier user and the rest of the raid.
Everyone was stretched taut. Every successful bit of teamwork only shaved off the tiniest sliver of the Kobold Lord's HP bar.
The seconds dragged by in agony.
And somehow, that nerve-shredding battle held together for more than three minutes without anyone going down.
But in the end, the thread forty people were balancing on still snapped under the pressure.
Kibaou got tripped by one of Illfang's swings, and the place he fell was diagonally behind the boss.
"Cover him!! Fall back!!" Diavel shouted on reflex.
But covering someone and retreating at the same time were nearly impossible to do, and after commanding for so long, even he had finally slipped up.
Satoru and Kirito, both in charge of intercepting, instinctively went for their charging Sword Skills. But the Kobold Lord's AI reacted faster than any of them. It was as if it had sensed the encirclement, and in the very next instant, it triggered that monstrously powerful area attack.
Whirlwind!
Boom!!
A red-gold gleam flashed through Illfang's eyes. Its huge body dropped low, then coiled and sprang upward. As it spun, its powerful frame twisted violently, and the nodachi looked like a rubber band wound tight and released all at once. Crimson light flooded over the bloodthirsty blade again, ready to burst into a spray of blood-red thorns.
"Yurnero, with me!!"
Driven by his Sword Skill, Kirito charged diagonally at the Kobold Lord in midair.
"..."
Satoru hesitated for a split second, then cursed under his breath and activated Reaver.
This kind of fearless role really doesn't suit me at all!
A streak of blue and a streak of orange-red slashed at the Kobold Lord as it wound up. The one-handed sword and curved blade struck its tensed left side one after the other. The impact felt like chopping into solid rock, and the force nearly ripped the weapons from their hands.
With a thunderous crash, Illfang let out a wail and slammed to the floor. Its powerful limbs thrashed wildly, but it couldn't get back up at once.
A huge attack like Whirlwind came with a price.
Stun.
Now it was the Kobold Lord's turn.
Satoru and Kirito, who had stopped it, were sent crashing to the ground in thoroughly ugly fashion, skidding a long way across the floor from the momentum.
"Everyone, full attack!! Surround it if you have to!" Diavel shouted decisively, charging straight past Team B's line himself.
Everyone unleashed all the fear and anger they'd been bottling up. Their battle cries rose together with Sword Skills of every kind, all crashing down on the defenseless Kobold Lord. Explosions of light and sound went off one after another, and its thick HP bar started dropping faster than anyone had seen so far.
It was a gamble. They were betting this burst would kill it before it could get back up. Otherwise, once the Kobold Lord was surrounded again, it would use Whirlwind a second time.
And with their charging skills on cooldown, neither Kirito nor Satoru would be able to stop it.
"Asuna, one last Linear! I'm leaving it to you!"
Kirito pushed himself upright and called the rapier user's name. Satoru understood exactly why. At a desperate moment like this, it was only natural to place their hopes on that rapier, flashing like a shooting star.
"Got it!"
The reply rang out sharp and clear.
"ROOOAR!!"
The Kobold Lord let out what sounded like its final desperate cry, and the whole floor trembled.
Even with the storm of Sword Skill light covering it, they still couldn't completely drown it out.
"The next Whirlwind is coming...!!"
Kirito broke into a panicked run, but he was nowhere near fast enough.
Seeing Agil and the others blown back by the explosion of light effects, Satoru swore.
...
No way around it now. Either it dies here, or we lose nearly half the raid.
Diavel's voice was already hoarse. He was the closest one to the Kobold Lord, and he'd already spent every skill he had. Even so, all he could do was watch as Illfang, with only a few percent of HP left, rose to its feet with a savage grin and a howl, grabbing that terrifying nodachi.
"Grrruuuuhhh————!!"
Was he laughing?
Or mocking them?
After nearly half an hour of fighting, it finally found an opening, sweeping across the battlefield and taking down more than ten players in a single strike.
"Too late..."
Kirito and Diavel, both rushing forward, felt their hearts drop.
Rip!!
The air tore with a sharp, buzzing shriek—but it wasn't the nodachi.
A streak of blue light shot in from behind.
One-handed straight sword. Charging Sword Skill. Sonic Leap!
That was... who?
Kirito's skills were on cooldown. So were Satoru's.
For a split second, even the Kobold Lord's AI hesitated.
You—weren't you using a curved sword?
Wrapped in sharp blue light, the figure cut clean across its left abdomen. Illfang's roar twisted into a dying scream.
"Go!!"
Completely spent, Satoru hit the ground again, rolling as he fell.
This was the Kobold Lord's second Whirlwind stun. If they still couldn't kill it now, they were done.
With everything they had left, the rapier user and Kirito struck from both sides with their strongest attacks.
It cracked—then shattered.
Fractures spread across the massive body, the nodachi stabbing point-first into the ground.
Then the First Floor boss of Aincrad exploded into countless fragments.
The pressure vanished.
Players dropped to their knees, staring blankly at the message that appeared above.
Congratulations!!!
A purple system message appeared before Satoru. The EXP from the Kobold Lord had gone to their party, split evenly between the three of them.
Ah...
Satoru's mouth felt dry.
I was going to take the last hit.
That's what a power-leveler like me should've done.