Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 6 - Chapter 14

14 

IT WAS HUGE. 

The tenth floor of the labyrinth tower was almost entirely taken up by the boss chamber, so that wasn’t a surprise in and of itself, but my first impression upon seeing the sixth-floor boss room for the first time in four and a half months was that it was just huge. The walls, floor, and ceiling were a bluish-gray color, and the weak lighting made the corners of the room look black. There was a huge star drawn on the ceiling high overhead, a reminder that the tower, and this room at the top of it, was actually pentagonal in shape. 

Viewed from the desert below, the width of the tower was about half its height. If it was a hundred meters tall, then the diagonal would be about fifty meters, and each side… 

“Hey, Asuna, what’s the ratio of the side of a pentagon to a diagonal, again…?” I murmured. The fencer shot me a look that said Why now? 

“It’s one to one plus the root of five over two. That’s about one point six one eight.” 

“One point six one eight…” I repeated. “So if the diagonal was fifty meters, a side would be…about thirty meters?” 

“Closer to thirty-one, to be precise, but it probably doesn’t matter that much.” 

“I see…” 

The only reason we could chat about unimportant topics like this in the boss chamber was because we were waiting for the ALS and DKB to get set up in position. It seemed like we still had another thirty seconds to go. Asuna turned to me this time and said, “One to one plus the root of five over two is called the Golden Ratio.” 

“Golden…?” 

“It’s found in the length-to-width ratio of the Parthenon or in the upper and lower halves of the Venus de Milo…even human faces. The width of the nose and mouth are considered well-balanced if their ratio is 1:1.618, apparently.” 

“Ohhh,” I murmured, staring at Asuna’s face in an attempt to see if it was true. She promptly jabbed me in the side, and Argo had to warn us, “Hey, we’re in a boss chamber!” Myia giggled. 

At last, Kibaou shouted from the other side of the room. “Placements are complete! We’re ready to go!” 

“Got it!” I shouted, glancing behind me briefly. The double doors, which jutted inward about ten meters from one of those pentagon sides, were still wide open. I prayed silently that they would stay that way and looked over to Theano, who stood next to her daughter. 

“Well…go ahead, Theano.” 

“I will,” she said, and the warrior focused on the golden cube in her hands. I saw some kind of expression ripple across her beautiful features like waves on a pond, then vanish. “Then let’s begin. Don’t go too far forward, Myia,” she warned her daughter, beginning to walk toward the center of the chamber. 

Where she headed sat a very strange object. 

Its shape was quite simple. It was a cube about a half meter to a side. It was as black and unreflective as if carved right out of charcoal, and though the details were hard to make out in the dim lighting, there was a square hole about twenty centimeters across on the side facing us. It was obvious at a glance that the golden cube would fit inside perfectly. 

“…Once the cube goes in, it’ll be so flush, we won’t be able to pull it back out…” I noted idly. 

On my right, Argo said, “From my inspection earlier, there’s a li’l hole on the opposite side of the cube.” 

“Oh…so you could shove a stick inside and push it back out…?” 

“A stick…or…” Argo started to say, then clammed up. Theano had crouched and stuck the cube into the hollow. 

The pitch-black hole accepted the cube as though it was oiled up; there was no scraping or catching whatsoever. The moment the black-and-gold surface became one, the dark bluish floor rumbled briefly. 

Suddenly, the black cube began to shine with golden light. Theano quickly retreated, and the raid members readied themselves at a safe distance. Many swords and spears reflected the shining light as the cube silently left the floor and floated into the air. 

It came to a stop about three meters off the ground, then began to rotate sideways. It started slow but picked up noticeable speed, becoming one with the gloom. Only the line of the golden cube itself remained visible, creating a ring of light in the air. 

Grrrng! 

The air shook again. A number of golden cubes appeared, practically out of thin air, and began to spin as well. But in fact, though I couldn’t count them directly, I knew exactly how many of the cubes there were: twenty-six. 

The golden cubes surrounded the rapidly spinning black cube and began to affix themselves to it. The rotation gradually slowed and came to a stop, revealing one golden block that was three times its previous size—now nearly two meters to a side. 

The twenty-six cubes had lined themselves up three by three to connect together, but they were not fused; there was a tiny bit of space left between them. In other words, they formed a gigantic Rubik’s Cube. 

“It’s just like the beta! If you hit the edges with your weapons, they’ll rotate to…” I stopped short, noticing something different. 

In the beta, the sides were red, blue, green, yellow, white, and black. Here, all the sides were the same golden color. Now there was no way to line them up…Or they were already lined up, I supposed. 

With the roar of a combustion engine, the twenty-six smaller cubes began to rotate in all directions at random. When they stopped, there was a bright pattern on the faces of each nine-squared side of the cube, for fifty-four squares in total. 

No, that wasn’t a pattern. It was more familiar than that, something written… 

“N…numbers…?!” Asuna gasped, right as a single-bar HP gauge appeared in the air over the giant Rubik’s Cube. Below the bar was the boss’s official name, shining in bright English letters: THE IRRATIONAL CUBE. 

And as I expected, the double doors boomed shut at that moment. 

“Here it comes…!” shouted a voice, most likely Lind’s. 

In reaction to that call, three of the boss’s eight corners emitted pale-gray lines that stabbed at the raid party. I summoned all the lung power I had and bellowed, “Evaaaade!!” 

Immediately, red laser beams shot forth, tracing the gray lines. They emitted terrifying swooping, sizzling sounds as small explosions erupted at three places in the chamber. Fortunately, no one took a direct hit, but I did see a few of the many HP bars in my vision dip a little due to local heat damage. 

The color and name were different from the beta—it had been the Irritating Cube—but this attack, at least, was very familiar. Aiming lines that were hard to pick up came first, followed a second later by the lasers. It would take a huge chunk of HP from any lightly armored players it struck, but as long as you were calm and observant, it wasn’t that hard to dodge them…Assuming you didn’t trip or get frozen, of course. 

Hoping to get a hint from the boss’s English name, I turned to my wiser partner and said rapidly, “What does the word irrational mean, Asuna?! In the beta, it was irritating, which I looked up later…” 

“It’s kind of like illogical—or incoherent.” 

“Illogical…” I repeated. No kidding! Even a child could line up the colors, but these numbers…Wait, maybe numbers were the same thing…? 

“Are you saying that we have to fill each side with the same number?!” I said, hoping I’d found the solution, but Argo shattered that hope just as quickly as it arrived. 

“But the numbers go up ta nine!” 

She was right. The glowing Arabic numerals were arranged randomly from one to nine, meaning that it would be impossible to match them up on the six separate sides like a classic Rubik’s Cube. I even considered the brainteaser-like option of flipping the nine over to be a six, but that wouldn’t be enough, and the six and nine had distinctly separate designs anyway. 

As though an NPC was what I really needed for a hint, Theano came back our way. “Theano, what do we do with the numb—?” I started to ask, but the woman just shook her head, looking pensive. 

“I don’t know, either. The legend around the mansion said only that to destroy the golden cube, it must be returned to the body of the tower’s guardian…” 

“Oh, okay…” 

In the meantime, the boss kept firing its lasers from the center of the room. The raid members weaved and jumped out of the way and struck the floating object with their weapons. Each blow caused the rows or columns of the cube to rotate ninety degrees, but there was no change to its HP at all. It seemed the numbered cube was invincible, and we needed to solve its puzzle to pull the blocks off. But there was nothing we could do without figuring out what kind of puzzle it was. 

The unease and frustration that filled the chamber finally sparked, and an orange flash went off near the boss. Someone had used a sword skill on it. 

“Don’t…!” I shouted on instinct, but it was too late, of course. A two-part spear strike sent up bright sparks from the face of the Irrational Cube, but it did not a single pixel of damage—and the boss sent out an aiming line as if on cue. 

“Dodge!” Kibaou bellowed. A gang of players near the line all leaped at once, except for the spearman, who was still frozen from the skill. The red laser seared him dead-on. 

“Aaaah!” shrieked the player, right as I heard a dull explosion. It looked like Schinkenspeck from the ALS. He was blasted off his feet and collapsed to the ground. One of the HP bars from Team C went down into the yellow zone, over halfway to zero. His friends helped move him over to the wall, but it would take some time for him to heal up. 

“…Maybe we should retreat for now, Kirito…” Asuna said, sounding tense. I bobbed my head somewhat awkwardly. 

It was clearly the right option. The boss was invincible, and we didn’t know how to undo it. Letting the battle drag on in this state was inevitably going to lead to disastrous results. But… 

I spun around and caught sight of the doors, which were shut tight. Asuna gasped; she hadn’t realized they’d closed. 

“…We don’t know for sure they won’t open again,” I said, out of hope, if nothing else, and raced for them, crossing the ten meters in the blink of an eye and practically slamming my free hand against the door. The thick bronze metal rattled a tiny bit but did not budge. It was locked… 

“…?!” 

Suddenly, a series of pale lights flashed across my vision, and I turned away. I held my breath, thinking it was an attack from the boss, but felt nothing. I looked back and gasped again. 

Numbers. 

There was a grid of light, glowing on the surface of the door, with Arabic numerals in the boxes. They were in the same font as the ones on the boss cube’s body…but there were more blank squares here than squares with numbers inside. 

I took a step back for a better look, right as Asuna arrived beside me. Together we shouted, ““A sudoku puzzle?!”” 

There was no doubt about it. The exact same kind of puzzles as in the teleport square of Stachion but filling the entire width of the massive doors. 

“So if we solve this, the doors will open?!” said Argo over our shoulders. 

“I…I think so?” I said uncertainly. “But…there’s just no way…” 

It wasn’t my style to give up before even trying something, but there was no other option this time. This puzzle had twenty-seven rows and columns of sudoku puzzles, each one in the nine-by-nine format, for a total of 729. That was one more than in the square at Stachion, but the layout was identical. 

In my mind, I replayed something Asuna had said four days earlier. 

At a glance, these look like maximum difficulty, so even an expert would take a good twenty minutes to solve one. Multiplying that by 728 would be 14,560 minutes…divided by sixty, that makes 242 hours and forty minutes… 

Two hundred and forty-two hours. A little over ten whole days. That would be an entire day if split between ten people. And trying to do them while avoiding the boss’s attacks the entire time? Impossible. 

“I’m guessing even the number layouts are exactly the same as in Stachion’s square…” Asuna whispered, her voice hoarse. “We should have solved the puzzles in Stachion, then come to this room by the end of the day. That was the minimum requirement for fighting this boss…” 

“But how would we…?” 

…know that? I tried to say. But I remembered looking up at these doors from the other side and seeing the grid pattern on the relief. It was a nine-by-nine grid. If I had just made the connection to sudoku, I could have remembered about the teleport square in Stachion. 

“……Damn!” 

I was about to slam a clenched fist against the cold, glowing puzzle—when I heard a voice behind me. 

“Do we just need to solve the puzzles, Kirito?” 

My hand paused in midair. I turned around and saw Myia, her gas mask off, staring at me with big eyes. 

“You…you can solve this?” 

“Yep!” she chirped, much more appropriately for her age now that her mother was around again. She trotted up to the door and reached for the puzzle in the bottom-right corner. Her finger traced the empty spots with dizzying speed until she settled on one glowing space to tap. When a window appeared with all the digits to choose from, she picked a seven. The other spaces disappeared, replaced by a single large seven. It took her a total of ten seconds. 

“Wha…? How…how did you do that so fast…?” I gaped. 

Myia spun to face me and beamed. “Well, ever since I was a little girl, I solved these puzzles in the town square with my mother every day.” 

That explanation didn’t cover the speed she exhibited…but then I remembered something. Kizmel had no major connection to puzzles, but she had solved that 15 puzzle in the secret-key dungeon in a matter of seconds. If an AI could solve an NP-high problem that fast, these sudoku puzzles must be no harder than simple arithmetic equations to them. 

“I’ll help you, too, of course,” said Theano, who stepped up next to Myia. I looked from their faces to the puzzle behind me and back. 

At ten seconds per puzzle, it would take 7,290 seconds to solve 729 of them. That would be a bit over 120 minutes. With the two of them, that would be sixty minutes—an hour. Maybe there was a chance… 

“…Please, Theano and Myia, do your best.” 

They nodded, set up at the right and left corners, and began solving, their fingers flying. I grabbed the shoulder of my still-stunned partner and said, “Asuna, we’ve got to go grab that boss’s attention. Our assignment is to dodge it for the next hour somehow.” 

“O…okay, if you say so.” 

“A-and what should I do?” asked Argo. 

“When Myia needs to solve the problems higher on the door, you lift her up!” I shouted, and started to run with Asuna toward the center of the chamber—but hit the brakes just as suddenly. 

“Wh-what’s the big idea?!” 

“Hey, listen,” I said, “if you select the right number from a pull-down menu, can’t we just go and select every number starting from one?” 

The fencer gave me the most annoyed look in our entire personal history together and shoved her face so close to mine, our noses nearly touched. “If they set up the puzzle that way, it’s obviously going to fail us as soon as we make a mistake!” 

“…Oh. Right.” 

Chastised, I allowed us to run back to the boss for real this time. 

The hour that passed after this point was the longest and hardest hour of all the many I’d spent in Aincrad so far. The boss battles of the second and fifth floors had been tough, but I just focused on fighting the enemy and didn’t process the passage of time. Those were fights to win and move on. This was different—we were evading attacks for an entire hour just to escape the room. 

Watch for the aiming beams from the eight corners of the Irrational Cube, then dodge. That was all it involved, but the finders were hard to see, and their timing and location were nastily designed. Often, it would strike the place you dodged on a time delay. It tried to gather multiple players in one place to collide with one another and sometimes incessantly went after a single individual. Whatever thought process it followed, it didn’t seem like a simple algorithm. 

When Asuna and I joined the front line of battle, we explained the situation to the ALS and DKB, of course, and it had a slight, if undeniable, effect on overall morale. Until that point, everyone had assumed that if the numbers were rotated enough (however it was supposed to work), they would eventually be able to inflict damage. But the intended numbers were a mystery, and anyone would be disappointed to learn that they needed to dodge for an entire hour just to escape. And if your level of concentration dipped, so did your mobility, making the danger rise. 

The next thing I knew, over ten of the thirty-six other raid members were back along the wall after taking direct laser blasts. The Irrational Cube hadn’t moved far from the center of the room because that was where the majority of the players were. The more people who retreated to the walls, the sooner the boss would start to target them, too—and the wider its movement range, the more likely it might stray toward the entrance doors, where it could attack Myia and Theano in the act of desperately solving all the sudoku puzzles. That was the one thing we had to avoid. 

Asuna and I shared thoughts with a single instant of eye contact, and I gave the boss the three-part Sharp Nail sword skill. The HP bar didn’t budge, of course, but the hate I built up from the cube caused all three targeting lines to aim for me. By that time, however, Asuna had already lifted me in her arms and raced off with me while my skill delay was still active. There was an explosion behind us, but we suffered no damage, just a little prickle of heat on the back. 

Next, Asuna gave the boss the three-part Triangular skill, and it was my turn to move her. That should be enough to keep the enemy focused on the two of us. 

Naturally, the algorithm wasn’t so simple that it would solely focus on the players with the highest hate quotient, and it occasionally strayed to go after others. But if we could draw half the lasers with our high agility, that would give the other six parties some major breathing room. 

“Kirito, ahead to the left!” 

I followed Asuna’s direction to avoid an aiming beam I couldn’t see and dashed in that direction. When applicable, I returned the favor. 

After this was repeated enough times, something strange began to happen. Every once in a while, before I even heard Asuna’s voice, I felt like I knew which way to go. It happened to her, too. More than once, I called out “Right!” after Asuna was already jumping that way. It was as though our minds were connected on some other channel beyond just voice and ears… 

It was a painful fight, knowing that it would not end in triumph, but I did feel an undeniable kind of elation as I dodged and wove around the targeting lines. When I had a moment to check my window for the time in the few instants the boss traveled away from me, the minutes crawled agonizingly slowly, but finally, a few minutes after ten in the evening— 

“It’s the last one, Kirito!” came Myia’s young but firm voice from the back of the chamber. I leaped backward on instinct and glanced at the doors. Nearly all the sudoku puzzles on their surface had the correct numbers on them, leaving only the central puzzle, which Theano was in the process of solving now. 

She hit the key box, selected a number from the pull-down menu, and it promptly enlarged and began to glow. 

As expected, over the course of an hour, they’d solved 729 puzzles. A rumble ran through the doors and the rest of the chamber as well. A line of light appeared through the center of the closed doors, and there was the loud clicking sound of a lock unlatching, telling us that our escape route was opening at last. 

“Let’s retreat to the hallway! Members undergoing healing, get outside first!” commanded Lind, swinging his scimitar. A dozen-plus players drinking potions along the wall stood up and began to run toward the doors. Even the Irrational Cube, which had been wildly firing its lasers just seconds ago, stopped in seeming recognition of the open door. 

At the very least, we wouldn’t have to worry about the entire front-line group wiping out. It sucked that we couldn’t knock even a single pixel off the boss’s HP bar, but that was because we were missing a crucial piece of information. If we went back and cleared out all the quests in Stachion or Murutsuki, we would find out whatever way we were meant to line up the boss’s numbers… 

“Kirito,” Asuna whispered, grabbing my elbow. I saw that she was looking at the doors, which were still closed. She was sensing something, but she couldn’t yet tell what it was, her body language said. 

I stared at the huge double doors twenty meters away, feeling the time gradually lengthen. 

729 puzzles had turned into 729 numbers that glowed silently at us. 

729…which was twenty-seven squared. Twenty-seven rows and twenty-seven columns. 

A three-by-three grid of nine-by-nine number blocks. 

I craned my neck, looking back at the floating Irrational Cube in the center of the room, then to the door again. I sucked in as much air as my lungs could handle and screamed, “Stop!!!” 

The player just a few meters from the door stopped reaching for it and turned in the direction of my voice. The DKB’s Shivata was closest to me. He looked aghast. “What’s wrong? Aren’t we getting out of here?!” 

“Wait, I think…those numbers…” 

I shot Asuna a look and started running until I had thrust myself in front of the door with my hands out in a sign for everyone to keep back. Then I waited. If my hunch was correct, this puzzle wasn’t meant to create an escape route. Clearing it would open the door, but that was probably a trick. If we just waited, I was certain, certain… 

The raid party’s confusion, irritation, and haste grew thicker and darker by the second. Five, six, seven…When nearly thirty seconds had passed since Theano finished the last puzzle, it finally happened. 

The 729 numbers suddenly flashed. 

Over half the numbers vanished, as though burned away by the light. In the various blank spots of the grid, there were faintly glowing boxes. Lastly, four of the grid lines thickened, cutting the entire pattern into nine-by-nine chunks. 

“Ah…!” Asuna gasped behind me. To my sides, Myia and Theano were equally shocked. 

It wasn’t a random and meaningless string of numbers arranged in twenty-seven rows and columns. It was a set of nine new sudoku puzzles. 

Gaoooong…A tremendous sound somewhere between a machine and the roar of a living creature shook the room. I spun around and saw that the Irrational Cube was moving again. And not just that…three of its four vertical faces were now growing long arms made of dozens of small cubes. The last face began to glow brightly. 

“It’s comin’!” bellowed Kibaou from the back, readying his sword. Lind issued a similar order to his followers. 

“Retreat canceled! Keep healing if you’re damaged, come back and remake formation if you’re fine!” 

They, too, had sensed that the boss’s attacks were going to intensify but that it meant there was now a chance to actually beat it. 

“Myia! Theano! Handle these puzzles, too!” I shouted. They sprang into action at the doors and began to slide their palms over the much larger puzzles. Ten seconds later, they pressed key boxes in unison and selected their answers. Those numbers grew larger and shone brighter. 

Mother and daughter completed their puzzles at the exact same speed, Theano taking the higher puzzles and Myia going for the low ones. Four, six, eight they completed, leaving just one more to go. 

There were fierce blasts and crashes and shouts from behind them, but they did their best to tune it out and focus on the moment. Theano put her hand on the center puzzle and selected a five from the menu. The number expanded to fill the space. 

The moment all the puzzles were finished, the doors shone with even more light than the previous time. I took several steps back and memorized the order of the nine mammoth numbers on the door. 

“Thank you…We’ll handle the rest!” I told them, turning back. I raced toward the raid party and shouted as loud as my throat could handle, “From top left across, it’s eight, three, four, one, five, nine, six, seven, two!!” 

There was a moment of silence. 

Then a dull roar arose from all around. With the numbers we needed revealed, the lowered morale began to rise again. In this situation, the teamwork and coordination of the two major guilds were at their best. Even without the members in the process of healing, they got into a formation that quickly surrounded the boss. 

And yet, lining up the numbers instead of colors was much harder than one might imagine. The numbers only had to be arranged on the one face that was lit up, but each blow moved three numbers together. You had to be constantly aware of what numbers were on which face and read several moves ahead of the present arrangement. 

Three minutes after combat resumed, my fears turned out to be prescient. The rearranging of the numbers was not moving quickly. They got the first four pretty smoothly, but then moving one caused others to go out of alignment, and irritation began creeping into Lind’s and Kibaou’s voices. If we whacked at it on a hunch, we’d eventually get it, but the boss’s long arms were not to be taken lightly. On top of the lasers, we now had to watch out for slams and swipes from the arms, which steadily ground down the HP of the combat members. 

I wasn’t sure whether to leap into the front row, or if that would only ruin the teamwork the six parties were using. 

“…Okay, I’ve got it,” Asuna said abruptly. She shot me a glance. “Kirito, I’m going to focus on giving orders. Can you handle the boss?” 

“Uh…yeah, of course.” 

We gave each other a nod and moved simultaneously. Asuna leaped in front of the boss and brandished her rapier. “Knock the lower block to the right!” 

“G-got it!” replied Hafner from the DKB. He hoisted his greatsword, circled around the right side of the boss, and swiped sideways. Once again, it did no damage, but the lower block did loudly rotate to the right, as Asuna had instructed. 

“Now knock the left blocks down!” 

“Roger that!” replied the ALS’s Okotan, whose halberd shone. The left column of blocks rotated downward. 

At this, the Irrational Cube must have sensed a difference, because it let out a discordant metal shriek. It swung two appendages made of cubes, hurtling them down at Asuna. I promptly leaped forward and activated the sword skill Vertical Arc. That was a two-strike combo of downward and upward slices, and it knocked the two arms away. Behind me, Asuna did not move a single step. 

Once she focused solely on the numbers, Asuna’s orders were frighteningly precise. With each block rotation, we could sense it growing closer to completion. 

But the boss could sense it, too, and it viciously, repeatedly went after Asuna, who was not physically attacking it. I could knock the arms away with sword skills, but the lasers were trickier. Each time the aiming beams swept toward her, I picked her up and jumped out of the way, but that got even harder when it did a delayed combination of lasers and then physical attacks. The raid members looked desperate, but if they tried attacking the boss to draw its attention, the cube formation we’d been working so hard on would be ruined, and if too many tried to surround her for protection, she wouldn’t be able to see the numbers. 

After yet another backward leap to escape a laser, my back struck a hard, flat surface. Somehow, I’d been pushed against the wall without realizing it. Two arms went into flat swiping motions from my sides, right on cue. I could strike back one of them, but not both… 

“I’ll get this one, Kirito!” said a voice. I shouted back, “Do it!” and focused on the arm coming from the left. After I knocked it away with Horizontal, I turned to my right and saw Theano thrusting the other appendage away with her sword. 

The strength of a hundred! I marveled silently, preparing for the next attack. Meanwhile, Asuna continued giving orders, which the stout warriors of the raid party faithfully carried out. Occasionally, they made the wrong input, but undoing it was as easy as reversing the last strike. 

The damageless assault on the boss lasted for twenty-something moves when Asuna’s clear voice called out, “Next one is the last! Strike the center blocks down!” 

“We got it!” “Yer on!” 

Lind and Kibaou had no intention of letting the other have the honor of the last blow. They charged from either side and slashed at the center-block column with scimitar and longsword together. 

Don’t push it, Lin-Kiba! I thought, but their aim was true. The center column rumbled and rotated, revealing an order of three, five, seven. The nine numbers on the front face of the boss shone so brightly, I couldn’t look directly at them. 

“We got it!” someone shouted, which was nearly drowned out by a deafening rumble as the twenty-six cubes and three arms that made up the Irrational Cube’s invincible armor crumbled away. 

Countless shards melted into thin air, revealing that pitch-black cube, a half meter to a side. In the middle of the side that faced us, we could see a smaller item—the golden cube that Theano put in there. 

This time, six new black arms extended from the black cube. They made unpleasant high-frequency ringing sounds as they writhed toward us. 

“This is the real battle! Take it slow, an’ let’s figure out the patterns!” Kibaou boomed. Both the ALS and DKB alike shouted “Yeah!” in response. 

It was a fierce battle indeed, but without its spotless armor, the Irrational Cube didn’t have the defense to stand up to the elite fighters of the advancement group, and more importantly, the level-32 mother swordswoman, Theano. Its single HP bar fell slowly but surely, past 50 percent, then 30…and in only seven minutes, it was down below 10 percent. 

Once everyone knew that the next good shot would end it, the Irrational Cube let out a horrid shriek that sounded like its dying cry and swung its six arms around wildly. All eight of its corners sent out aiming beams. 

“It’s going wild! Buckle down!” Lind commanded. Everyone went on guard. 

Within a moment, all the arms had been deflected, and all the lasers dodged—and as though its batteries had run dry, the boss of the sixth floor of Aincrad fell to the floor with a thud and ceased moving. I relaxed my shoulders, thinking it was finally over…but there was one stubborn pixel remaining on its HP bar. 

“Wha…? Hey, what gives?! Izzit gonna self-destruct?!” Kibaou wailed. I wondered the same thing. The raid members nearest to the landing point sprang away and buckled down against an explosion…but nothing happened. The boss, golden cube pointed my direction, was silent. 

That reminds me, Argo said something about this, I recalled. Something about the reverse side of the cube… 

At that moment, someone leaped forward toward the cube. Whoever it was must have assumed there would be no self-destruct and wanted to seize the last attack bonus. He was dressed in silver and blue—the DKB. Lind would probably scold him later, but this would, at last, be the end of the long, long battle… 

“Huh…?!” Asuna gasped at my side, and I suddenly realized what she was looking at. 

It wasn’t a weapon the running player had in his hand. It was a narrow piece of metal only a few centimeters long. A throwing needle…no. 

A key. 

Time froze as the slender player crouched behind the back of the cube and stuck the key into the keyhole where I couldn’t see it. There was a faint click, and the golden cube slid out of the block, tumbling to the floor. 

“…!” 

Theano let out a sharp breath and jumped forward. I raced after her. 

The DKB member stood up. He circled around the block and scooped the cube off the floor. 

As she ran, Theano silently drew her rapier. 

The DKB member raised the cube high with both hands and shouted. 

“Bind!!” 

There was a sound of slicing air, and a ring of golden light shot forth from the cube, swallowing Theano and me as it passed us. My feet suddenly stuck to the floor, and I tipped over spectacularly. I thought I was going to tumble, but because my feet were stuck to the ground, I only leaned at an extreme angle before bouncing back upright. Theano was similarly rooted to the spot. 

“…?!” 

Stunned, I looked down to see translucent cubes growing out of the floor to engulf my feet. On instinct, I checked my HP gauge. To the right of the list of buffs, there was a new icon that hadn’t been there a second before. It was an unfamiliar debuff: a human silhouette within a square border. 

“Why?! Why would you do this?!” I tried to yell, but then I belatedly noticed that I had no voice. My entire body—legs, arms, even fingers—was as heavy as lead. 

Even in the midst of this emergency, a part of my mind was occupied with a different question. Theano’s level was quite high but not enough to obliterate the monsters of the tower in one hit. She must have used the power of the golden cube to freeze, or Bind, the ophidians. 

Suddenly, I realized the boss chamber was filled with silence. I could hear no voices, nor even the scraping of metal armor. Golden light filled the vast, fifty-meter chamber from corner to corner. Every last raid member must have been bound. I couldn’t move my right hand, so I couldn’t even open my window. It was the ultimate immobilization debuff, far beyond even the paralyzing poison. 

The mystery DKB player slowly lowered the golden cube. He wore a sallet helmet that covered the top of his head, leaving only the mouth visible. The cursor over his head was orange, the criminal color, certainly because of the debuff he’d just used. His name was Buxum. I couldn’t recall ever seeing that name in a raid fight before. 

Buxum’s mouth abruptly curled into a savage grin. The moment I saw it, I knew. 

He was with Morte and Joe. He was one of the black poncho’s followers. At some point, he had infiltrated the DKB, waiting for this very moment to strike. 

If it were Morte, he’d laugh his dry laugh and spout some theatrical lines at this point, but Buxum just leered and said nothing. Instead, he transferred the large cube to one hand so he could draw his longsword. 

It was modestly made, but the wet gleam on the thin blade spoke of stats that were no joking matter. The sword dangled from his hand as he strode right toward Theano. 

He’s going to kill her, I realized instantly. 

Whether he was going to kill the entire raid party starting with Theano, or just the NPC on her own, I wasn’t sure. But even if the latter, I couldn’t passively watch it happen. Myia was behind me. There was no way I could allow a ten-year-old girl to watch the mother she’d just been reunited with be helplessly slaughtered. No way at all… 

“………!” 

Stressed, silent air escaped my throat in place of a scream. I used every bit of force I could summon. My avatar’s muscles quaked and joints creaked. But the invisible shell that surrounded me did not budge. 

Buxum came to a stop before Theano. He lifted his sword and aimed carefully at her heart, preparing to finish it all in a single blow. 

Move. 

Move move move movemovemovemovemove!! 

It was the only word in my mind, the boundaries between the start and end blurring into one pattern of sounds, losing meaning. A high-pitched ringing sound rose from deep within me, spreading from fingers to toes… 

And then I saw it. 

The Bind debuff icon was blinking. A new icon began to flicker next to it. The silhouette of a person in a Zen meditative pose. It was…not the Meditation buff. The design was the same, but there was now a golden ring behind the silhouette. 

!! 

I thought I heard something break. 

My right foot pounced off the floor, instantly launching me over ten meters forward. Drawn by invisible strings, I swung back the Sword of Eventide. Buxum noticed my charge; his eyes widened through the slits of the sallet helm. With remarkable reaction speed, he lifted his sword and took a defensive position. 

“Raaaaaahh!!” I bellowed, swinging my sword on a direct line at him. 

Pkiiing! It almost sounded like a scream. 

Buxum’s longsword split just above the hilt—and so did his left arm behind it, nearly to the elbow. 

Momentum carried me straight past both Theano and Buxum. As soon as I landed, I spun 180 degrees. It was fast enough that I normally would have tumbled, but it was as if inertia no longer existed. 

The twisted smile was gone from Buxum’s face, now that he had lost his sword and arm. With his good arm, he lifted the cube again. 

“Bi…” 

But before the word was out of his mouth, I swung again. 

Like the left arm, his right was severed at the elbow, and it vanished pitifully on the spot. Without its support, the golden cube thudded to the floor. 

Even for an enemy, I had to admire the quickness with which Buxum reacted after losing both arms. He promptly spun around and raced with tremendous speed for the exit. 

“Oh, no, you don’t!” I yelled, but the strength had gone out of my legs, and I fell to my knee right on the spot. The icon that resembled the Meditation buff blinked and went away. 

I managed to get to my feet, but by that point, Buxum was already at the door. He slammed into it to push it open and vanished into the hallway. There was no way I could catch up to him at that speed. 

A few seconds later, one of the HP bars from Team F on the left side of my view neatly disappeared. Struggling against the stifling weight that seemed to be the physical cost of the mystery buff, I surveyed the boss chamber. Theano, Asuna, Argo, Myia, and all the other raid members were still under the effect of the binding spell. Surely it wasn’t permanent, but how to undo the paralysis? The answer to that was obvious, however. 

I sheathed my sword and scooped the cube up off the ground, then walked over toward the black block. There was still the one pixel of health on the bar hanging in the air over it. 

I knelt in front of the boss and gazed at the golden cube, in my hands at last. This object had changed the lives of many people. Cylon, Theano, Myia, Terro the gardener, and probably Pithagrus, too. Now it was time for it to be destroyed. 

I stuck the cube against the hole in the block and pushed, and it smoothly slid inside on its own. I waited until the surface was sheer to draw my sword again. 

Using the pommel, rather than the well-worn blade edge, I struck the top of the black cube. 

That was enough. Cracks spread from the spot, and blue light spilled out from within. At that moment, the Irrational Cube, boss of the sixth floor of Aincrad, was out of HP, and it crumbled into pieces, including the golden cube within it. Only the steel key escaped that fate. It tumbled lightly to the floor. 

I plopped down on the seat of my pants as the message proclaiming the LAST ATTACK bonus appeared overhead. 

A moment later, the raid members were released from their negative status, and an uproar promptly arose. Some people collapsed to the ground, others flipped over, and Kibaou turned on Lind. 

The boss chamber was now light, as though waking from a nightmare, and full of lively sound. I looked up when I heard footsteps approaching and saw Theano coming over. 

It wasn’t just her. Asuna, Myia, and Argo were all rushing toward me. 

Enveloped in an irresistible blanket of fatigue, I could do nothing more than lift my right hand to wave at my beloved companions.