9
IN A FOREST CLEARING A SHORT DISTANCE from Mananarena, the other members had already congregated ahead of us.
Thanks to Asuna’s formidable Persuasion skill, I saw Agil’s Bro Squad, Shivata, Liten, and one other player from each guild, wearing their respective colors. I’d asked the two of them to recruit members if possible, expecting it to be futile, so this was a pleasant surprise.
Nezha went off to pay his respects to Asuna and the others, so I approached Shivata’s group.
“Sorry for being so…”
“ Late ,” I was going to say, but the large DKB member with Shivata spun around ferociously and grabbed me by the collar.
“Hey there, Blackie,” said Hafner, a greatsword user and subleader of the DKB, calling me by a nickname that referred to my outfit. He leaned in with a menacing face that made me think of a soccer team member and growled, “I’m going to clobber you if it turns out that you’ve told a single lie about any of this.”
Setting aside the fact that the Anti-Criminal Code in town and the threat of going orange out of town prevented him from actually clobbering me at all, I nodded obediently. Shivata grabbed Hafner’s shoulder with an awkward smile and pulled him back.
“Haf, this idea came more from our side. All Kirito offered was the info about the guild flag, and I don’t think he’s lying. Why would he? There’s nothing for him to gain by it.”
“…Well, you might have a point there. But why would he put together such a dangerous plan? Does he have a good reason to keep the ALS from getting that flag thing?”
“Hang on,” I interrupted, waving my right hand to cut off the DKB officers. “First of all, the point of this operation isn’t just to keep the ALS from getting the guild flag. When the flag drops, we can’t give it to the DKB, either. If either guild gets the flag, it might spell the collapse of the other.”
It seemed that Shivata had explained this premise to Hafner already. The soccer player scowled but fell silent, so I took the opportunity to ask, “What about you, Hafner? Are you sure you should be taking part? We’re extremely grateful for your help, but as a subleader of the DKB, you’ll be betraying your own guild.”
Hafner ruffled his long blond hair, which was held back at the hairline by a string, and grumbled, “Yeah, I’m not thrilled about it, but beating the game comes first…and we need both the DKB and ALS to get out of this shitty MMO. I can’t betray the thousands below who are waiting for freedom, even if it means betraying Lind and my guild. That’s why you’re here, too, right?”
That last question was directed toward Liten and the other ALS member, who were standing a short distance away.
The midsized, mid-build older man—he looked to be in his thirties—carrying a halberd on his back drew his faintly whiskered lips together and nodded.
“That’s right. Our plan to charge ahead is the reckless result of a few hard-liners playing on the fears of the officers. Kibaou knows that, but he was forced to approve the plan to keep the guild from fracturing. But if getting that flag means destroying the already-unstable relationship with the DKB, then it means nothing,” the halberdier said calmly. He walked over to me and stuck out his hand. “We’ve met a few times in boss battles. I’m Okotan, the leader of the ALS’s recruiting team. Good to work with you, Kirito.”
“Uh…th-thanks for being here…”
I was momentarily surprised by the name, which was rather cute for a scruffy-faced dandy like him, but I recovered in a timely enough fashion to shake his hand.
However, a thought occurred to me.
“So if you’re the head recruiter, does that mean you were the one who scouted Liten for the guild…?”
“Yes, that was me.”
The look on his face as he turned back to appraise the plate-armored macer was fatherly. It made me wonder if he realized Liten and Shivata were a couple, but that wasn’t for me to bring up.
With our greetings out of the way, Hafner slapped me heartily on the back.
“Well, Blackie, me and Oko have explained our motives to the group. Before we get this shindig on the road, why don’t you tell the group why you’re leading the charge?”
“Wh-what?”
I tore my eyes away from the soccer player and saw that Asuna, Argo, Nezha, Agil, and the Bros were all gathered around, waiting to hear my answer. There was no escape. I cleared my throat.
“Well, it’s the same as Hafner and Okotan…and probably everyone else here. The ALS and DKB are the two wheels that run our progress forward through the game. If they aren’t attached by a center axle, or we lose one of the two, the whole cart grinds to a halt. I figure the only way to prevent that situation is to beat the boss before the ALS does…And that’s why I gathered you all here.”
Of course, that was barely half of my true motivation.
Okotan described the ALS’s plan as the rampage of a hard-line minority in the guild, but there was a darker side to the story he didn’t know about. There was an external evil that had infiltrated the guild and was fanning the flames of conflict with the DKB—the mysterious poncho man and his provocation-PK gang. Stopping them was my true motive.
But I couldn’t reveal that yet. Until I at least knew the names of the other members aside from Morte, bringing the subject up would only lead to distrust and paranoia within the guilds.
Fortunately, everyone aside from Asuna, who already knew the truth, seemed to be satisfied by the speech. Even Hafner, though disgruntled, nodded in agreement.
At that point, Liten raised her right hand with a clank , her features hidden once again by the metal visor. She spoke in that androgynous metallic echo.
“Um, Kirito, I’ve been meaning to ask you…if you’re so concerned about the state of the group, why don’t you join a guild? I’m certain that given your skill, you’d be placed as a party leader in either guild immediately…”
A murmur ran through the group. It was an honest question from someone new to the scene, but given that she probably didn’t even know the word beater , it would be very difficult to give a detailed explanation of the touchy situation between me, Kibaou, and Lind.
After about a second and a half of frantic thinking, I decided to lay the blame for that question at the feet of the two guild masters.
“Well, you see, Lind and Kibaou said that if me and Asuna were going to join guilds, we’d have to join them separately.”
Another murmur ran through the group, which gave me a brief moment of panic that I’d said something stupid. Red-faced, Asuna wailed, “Wh-why would you say that?!” and Liten followed with, “Ah yes, I understand…That’s beautiful!” Meanwhile, Agil bellowed with laughter and Argo cackled.
In the end, I wasn’t given the opportunity to plead my case against her misinterpretation.
By the time Argo had divvied up all the potions, and everyone had lent and borrowed gear until each slot had the highest stats possible, it was just getting to be three o’clock in the afternoon.
According to Okotan, the ALS would leave Mananarena for the tower—pretending to be leaving for the party in Karluin—at around six o’clock, which gave us a three-hour advantage. Even with a scouting run, it wouldn’t likely take three hours to fight the boss, so we had plenty of time. Still, it didn’t hurt to ration it carefully.
So I left Argo to be our guide and ran along at the back of the group with Asuna, jotting down a loose, estimated breakdown of the group according to level.
1. KIRITO , level 18, one-handed sword, leather armor
2. ASUNA , level 17, rapier, light metal armor
3. AGIL , level 16, two-handed ax, light metal armor
4. HAFNER , level 16, two-handed sword, heavy metal armor
5. SHIVATA , level 15, one-handed sword, heavy metal armor, shield
6. OKOTAN , level 15, two-handed halberd, light metal armor
7. WOLFGANG (Agil’s squad), level 15, two-handed sword, leather armor
8. LOWBACCA (Agil’s squad), level 15, two-handed ax, light metal armor
9. NAIJAN (Agil’s squad), level 14, two-handed hammer, heavy metal armor
10. LITEN , level 13, long mace, heavy metal armor, shield
11. NEZHA , level 12, chakram, light metal armor
12. ARGO , level unknown, claws, leather armor
“Hmmmm…”
It was a very short list for a floor boss raid party.
The path through the woods was lined with the bluish rock that made our group’s footsteps ring loudly, but Asuna still heard me mutter and looked over for clarification.
“What’s the ‘hmmm’ about?”
“Well…” I made the memo visible and showed it to her. “We need to figure out a formation before we get to the labyrinth tower, and I’m noticing that we have an awful lot of DPSs…”
“What’s a DPS?”
“It means damage dealer, an attacker. Out of the twelve on this list, me, you, Agil, Hafner, Wolfgang, Lowbacca, and Naijan are attackers—that’s more than half. Shivata and Liten are our only true tanks, and Okotan, Nezha, and Argo are CCs…”
“CC?”
“Crowd control, responsible for controlling the enemy mobs. These are mages in most other games, but since there’s no magic in SAO , it mostly comes down to using debuffing sword skills that freeze or weaken monsters.”
“Ah, right. Most of the longer-reaching weapons have debuffing skills,” noted Asuna, who deftly crossed her arms to think, even as she ran, the momentum pulling her body forward. She murmured to herself the same way I had earlier.
“…It’s just two parties, so we can ask Shivata and Liten to be a tank in each, then split the DPS and CC between the two, right?”
“That would be the orthodox method. The thing is, the golem only has direct attacks with its hands and feet, but they’re all extremely powerful…The normal attacks are one thing, but even a shield isn’t going to stop the skill attacks. So we have to avoid them no matter what. Shivata’s experienced, but…”
“…But Liten just joined the guild, and it’s a bit scary to push such a difficult role on her,” Asuna finished. We groaned together, my arms crossed, too. I glanced at the list again.
Even with a simpler lineup of twelve total, there was no single correct answer. If it was a full raid of forty-eight, the possibilities were limitless. And Lind and Kibaou were doing this process for every floor and field boss.
That realization brought a wave of newfound respect for the two, but the goal here was to beat them to the punch. As we grumbled over the quandary, the dead forest around us thinned out, revealing a long stone wall snaking ahead.
Its length and breadth was on a scale that reminded me of the Town of Beginnings, but it was not a city on the other side of this fortification. Instead, it was the largest maze of the fifth floor, which had to be maneuvered before you could reach the labyrinth tower.
There were monsters, too, of course, so it would take more than a day or two to map it all out. However, as long as you solved a few environmental puzzles, you could take shortcuts on a virtual straight shot through the maze, and we had a helpful companion with us in that regard.
I unfolded my arms and sped up to catch Argo, who was at the head of the right column of the group.
“Um, Miss Argo, is there a map to…”
“The maze? You bet.”
I sighed in relief. The information broker glanced over at me and grinned. “And it’s piping hot an’ fresh, so it’s worth five thousand col, I reckon.”
“Wh-what?! You’re gonna charge me?!”
“Argo the claw wielder’ll fight the boss with you for free, but Argo the information dealer needs to earn a living.”
“Hrrrgh…”
I gnashed my teeth, wishing that I had done more relic hunting back in Karluin.
“Nya-ha-ha-ha! No worries, I just thought I’d tease you a bit for that lovey-dovey stuff back there,” Argo cackled, and winked at me. “Yes, I mapped the labyrinth, but you won’t need it.”
“Uh…what do you mean?”
“You’ll see when we get there,” she hinted, and turned us to the right.
The fifth-floor labyrinth was in the northeast corner of the floor, and the maze, which was a third of a mile in radius, surrounded it in a semicircle. That meant that at either end, the looming stone wall intersected with the outer aperture of the floor.
Argo was leading us toward the southeast end. It took us off the path, so we ran into a few mobs, but with twelve members, each battle would be over in an instant if we fought full strength. Instead, we used a bit of time to allow for a show of our combination work, and it was about three forty-five when we reached our destination.
“Nice work, everyone. That ends the trekking across the wilderness, at least,” Argo noted, and we gratefully came to a stop.
I stretched and glanced around us, taking in the rather desolate sight. To the north loomed the sixty-foot wall, and to the south and west were barren gray wastelands without a blade of grass on them. Beyond that was the dead forest we’d just traveled through, dyed in monochrome by the lengthening rays of the winter sun.
When my eyes rolled to the east, they beheld an expanse of endless sky through the nearby aperture, but the faded, grayish-blue color struck me as ominous, not the sweeping majesty of the starry sky that Asuna and I saw at Blink & Brink. I turned back to the dark stone wall and looked up.
According to the legend that Argo told the group on our trip, at the middle of the giant maze was the secret development center of the ancient kingdom, and the maze was built to deter outsiders from infiltrating it. That only made the massive wall even more foreboding, but to do anything, first we had to somehow get past it somehow.
Once the party had finished eating its cake and gathered around, I explained, “A-Team will be Hafner, Shivata, Okotan, Lowbacca, Naijan, and Liten. B-Team will be me, Asuna, Agil, Wolfgang, Nezha, and Argo. What do you think about that split?”
This apparently ran counter to their expected groups, and a murmur ran through the gathering before Shivata cut through to ask, “So…A-Team is the tanks, and B-Team is the attackers?”
“That’s right.”
“That goes against common theory. Why didn’t you split us up evenly?”
“We didn’t quite have enough tanks to pull that off. Shivata and Liten are the only ones with shields, so if we put them in separate parties, they might not hold out long enough for potion rotation. In that case, we should have one party with high defense maintain boss aggro, which should make it easier to manage HP. Of course, that will create a heavier load for our tanks…”
Shivata shook his head at that last statement and said, “Don’t worry about that,” before continuing with his rebuttal. “But if we have all the tanks together, we won’t be able to handle wide-ranging simultaneous attacks. Won’t that be a problem?”
“Well, just going off of the beta, the golem boss of this floor doesn’t have any area attacks like Breath. It mostly punches and stomps, with different timings for either side. So as long as we manage its hate levels, a single party should be able to continually defend for us.”
“Ahh, I see,” Shivata murmured.
I looked around at the other members of the group and added, “Of course, I’m going to scout out the boss first to make sure there aren’t any unexpected attack types. Once we start for real, we’ll make sure there’s a clear escape route for when the boss’s HP gauge changes color, so we can dart out in case of any unknown patterns. Yes, we’re fighting with only two parties, but we’ve absolutely got a chance, and I don’t intend for us to lose a single member. So…to ensure that Shivata and Liten’s count down party is a success and to ensure that 2023 is a year of hope for all of us…let’s pool our strength together and win this battle!”
For some reason, it turned into a bit of a pep talk at the end, and I was momentarily afraid that I’d overstepped my bounds.
“Hell yeah! Let’s do this!!” Agil roared, pumping a fist, followed by a chorus of approval from the group.
I silently thanked the man and raised my fist in solidarity.
4:15 PM, December 31, 2022.
The hastily assembled floor boss raid opened the steel doors and set foot inside the labyrinth tower.
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