Sword Art Online - Volume 23 - Chapter 8.1

8

The sight of the pale moonlight shining down upon the white, ice-crusted plains was so beautiful that I was left speechless, even knowing it was all just a virtual rendering. It was our newest party member, Kuro, the lapispine dark panther, who brought me back to reality with a headbutt to my waist.

“Rrrr…,” it purred, telling me to get going. I gave its neck a scratch and replied “Good idea. We’re almost to the Bashin village.”

In fact, the village wasn’t our final destination. We were going to ask them for information about the birdpeople Sinon had met, and then we’d have to continue from there. If we could meet up with Sinon by midnight, that was probably the best outcome we could hope for.

Thanks to the hailstorm, the little monsters were out of the way, so it was best if we ran as far as we could while the coast was clear. I was about to give the signal to launch when Lisbeth cut me off.

“About that, Kirito.”

“About what…the Bashin?”

“Yeah. Remember how I said Silica, Yui, and I had a meal in the Bashin’s big tent? Well…they had a bunch of fur rugs on the ground in there.”

“And…?”

“I’m pretty sure I saw one of them that was a mixture of black and blue…”

“…”

I looked away from Liz to Kuro’s back. The shining black fur had a streak of brilliant blue running down its spine, just as the species name described.

Yui was already enamored with Kuro. She patted its back and added, “Yes, there was a rug in the corner of the tent with this color arrangement on it. It was a ninety-nine percent match with Kuro’s fur.”

If Yui said it, then mistaken memory wasn’t a factor. That left no doubt that the Bashin hunted lapispine dark panthers on the savanna.

True or not, in a normal game, an NPC would never attack a player’s tamed monster. Still, there was no guarantee it would work the same way in Unital Ring.

“Hmm. In that case, what if we have you wait with Kuro outside the village so that we can go and collect information inside?” Leafa suggested. That was a logical idea, and I was going to add that they should get some food for me, too, if they got fed.

But then Yui spoke again. “Actually, Papa, we might not need to go into the village at all.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“The earlier storm was of considerable scope. If Sinon encountered the same storm, it’s possible she could be on the opposite side of the savanna.”

“…I see. That’s true…But how will we make contact with Sinon, then? She’s not a registered friend or party member, so we can’t send messages,” I said.

Yui beamed. “Why do you need to contact her in Unital Ring? Why not in the real world?”

Following my daughter’s advice, I logged out and sat upright. Going from the icy white plains to my man-made room gave me a bout of momentary dizziness until I looked to my side. On the left side of the bed was Suguha, wearing her AmuSphere and looking defenseless in her sleep…but of course, she wasn’t sleeping. Suguha was currently in a far-off virtual world, protecting my avatar. We knew there were no enemies in visible range, but there was always the possibility of a dangerous monster popping into existence, so I needed to hurry.

I lifted the AmuSphere visor and grabbed my phone. With the introduction of the Augma, it was quickly becoming an obsolete bit of gadgetry, but I used it to call Sinon anyway.

She was probably in the midst of a UR dive, too, but the AmuSphere had a linking feature to your smartphone that allowed you to receive calls there. Assuming she had it turned on—and that she wasn’t in the midst of battle or something else just as important—she should answer. I waited patiently for thirty seconds, listening to the ring signal.

“Make it quick!” came her response, getting right to the point. That was Sinon’s voice, so I obliged her request by launching into the topic at hand.

“Did you get stuck in the ice storm?!”

“Nearly froze to death about twenty minutes ago.”

“So you’re in the Giyoru Savanna, too?”

“Yes, I’m heading southeast from the northwest.”

“Got it. We’ll head northwest from the southeast! Is there any terrain near you that makes for a good landmark?”

“You bet there is. There’s a gigantic natural wall running north to south, probably through the middle of the savanna. I went into a cave through the wall. That’s where I am right now.”

“Cave in the wall…? Any monsters?”

“Tons. I logged out in a safe-ish place, but they could pop up at any time, so I can’t stick around.”

She was doing the exact same thing I was, but while I had my teammates and pet to protect me, Sinon was all alone. If she got attacked while she was logged-out, she’d die in moments.

“All right. We’ll go into the wall from the east side. Just hang in there.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

She hung up. I took a quick sip of water, then lay down on the bed again and lowered the AmuSphere visor.

Back on the moonlit plains, the ice had begun to melt in the few minutes I’d been logged-out. The girls scooped up the remaining ice and drained it into the water jugs. No monsters had appeared in the area yet.

“I’m back!” I called out, rising to my feet. Kuro rubbed its head on me again. Despite its fierce appearance, it seemed to be very cuddly once it took to you. After feeding it all the bear jerky, we’d need to find some more food soon.

Lisbeth, Leafa, and Yui gathered around to listen to Sinon’s message.

“A natural wall…?” Leafa murmured, staring to the northwest. I did the same, but there was nothing visible beyond the darkness of the horizon. I started to worry that there was some huge misunderstanding afoot. But Sinon had risked her character’s life to pass on that information, so I just had to trust it.

“Let’s hurry,” I said. The girls nodded, and Kuro issued a quick chuff.

We ran across the plains, encountering two packs of the familiar hyenas and one bison-like monster. The bison was a bit of a handful, but with Kuro distracting the beast and performing acrobatic feats, we were free to use enough sword skills to whittle down its HP. The rest of the girls each earned a level from that fight.

The bison also dropped a ton of raw meat, which Kuro was very happy to eat, thankfully. Now I wouldn’t have to worry for a while about the tamed effect wearing off due to hunger.

There were no more encounters after that point. Thirty minutes of travel later, Yui pointed ahead and shouted, “I can see a wall!”

I stopped and squinted until a surface rising directly above the plains was visible to me. The massive cliff ran from north to south, and its scale reminded me of the Everlasting Walls from the Underworld.

“And somewhere in there is a cave where Sinon’s waiting?” asked Lisbeth. That was correct, but the more I thought about it, the tougher it was going to be to find one little cave mouth on a surface that was miles long. Plus, there was no guarantee that there’d be only one of them. I thought hard, trying not to panic about the task ahead.

“…Papa, this might not be fair, but I’m going to enhance my eyesight to look for the cave,” Yui announced, her eyes wide.

Of the four of us, Lisbeth, Leafa, and I were using our brains to “see” the visual information the AmuSphere provided, but as an AI, Yui could process the brightness and contrast of those details all she wanted. I didn’t want to treat her like some kind of convenient software tool, but we had to meet up with Sinon. Besides, if we’d proceeded to the Bashin village like we’d originally planned, I’d be asking her to interpret for us there anyway. One way or another, I needed Yui’s help.

“I’d appreciate that,” I murmured. Yui briefly looked at me, smiled, then turned back to concentrate. A few seconds later, she pointed at a spot ahead of us.

“I’ve found it! There’s a staircase and a cave entrance in this direction!”

“Thanks, Yui!” said Leafa, hugging the little girl. Liz rubbed her head, too.

From here, there was no way to tell how thick across the cliff wall was, but I couldn’t imagine it being miles long. Even if the cave made a dungeon, it wouldn’t be that big.

Hang in there just a bit longer, Sinon! I told her silently and started running in the direction that Yui pointed.

The faint cliff off in the distance grew more and more substantial as we approached, and once we were at its foot, the size of it left us speechless. The cliff was about 150 feet tall, and though there were wider elevation gaps in Alfheim, the distance this wall covered was vast. A single line of vertical cliff that stretched from one end of the horizon to the other was the sort of thing that typically looked like lazy level-design in a game, but for some reason, in the world of Unital Ring, it felt like a true natural wonder.

The dark rock face was hard and smooth; there was no way to climb it by hand. Perhaps it might be possible to craft a ladder to place against it, but there were no trees or vines nearby to harvest for material. We’d have to use the stairs Yui’d spotted.

Those stairs were carved out of just a foot of space along the cliff face, with nothing to hold on to. It was close to a hundred feet to get to the cave entrance, so one bad misstep would mean certain death. I wanted to place a guide rope on the wall, but over an hour had passed since I contacted Sinon, and we couldn’t keep her waiting any longer.

“Kuro, can you get up these stairs?” I asked. The black panther growled, then hopped ten feet up the steps without fear. It even wagged its tail with excitement.

Well, it wouldn’t do for its master to be afraid of the challenge now.

“Okay…here I go,” I announced. Behind me, Lisbeth huffed “Come on—hurry up already.”

Thankfully, we reached the top without any accidents, but we didn’t dare relax until we were all inside the open mouth of the cave at the end. The stairs were man-made, so I figured the cave was, too, but it seemed to be natural. Meaning someone had carved out the steps from the cliff in order to reach the hole yawning in the middle of the wall. That would have been an NPC, not a player, of course. But was it these Bashin people or someone else? There was no way to know.

In any case, this was the first proper dungeon to explore since our forced conversion yesterday. I doubted any players had been in here before us, so any materials or treasure chests—if they existed—would be there for the taking. That made me want to chart out every step of the place, but meeting up with Sinon was our top priority.

We’d run a long way to get here, so my SP bar was below 60 percent, and my TP was below 50. We had plenty of drinking water, but the only food was raw bison meat. For now, I decided to drink some fluids and feed Kuro the meat and water, and we could eat something after finding Sinon.

“This is kind of an unorthodox party, so how are you thinking we’ll take formation?” asked Leafa once she had put away her water jug.

I considered that and replied, “Me and Kuro in the front, Liz and Yui in the middle, and you take the rear, Leafa. Yui and I can hold the torches.”

Lisbeth made a face like she wanted to say something. She was the only one with a shield, so she probably wanted to stand up front to play a tank, but I wanted her to focus more on protecting Yui. Thankfully, she took my point and didn’t argue.

“Fine, just switch out as soon as things get hairy.”

“Thanks. I’m counting on you.”

And with that, we had our 2-2-1 formation.

Among VRMMO players, there was a tendency to think that there was plenty of time to assume formation once battle started, and lining up while you were only on the move was dumb and uncool. I’d probably agree with that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but in Aincrad, it took only one moment of carelessness to lead to tragedy—especially in a dungeon, where things were cramped and chaotic. Even now that we weren’t in a death game anymore, I tended to be thorough about battle formation.

“Tell me if you notice any monsters,” I whispered to Kuro, scratching its neck. The panther answered “Graar.”

Sinon said there were “tons” of monsters over the phone, and that did not turn out to be an exaggeration. There were plenty of slimy amphibian-type monsters in the dank cave, and they had us constantly on our heels. Fortunately, Kuro’s advanced searching capabilities enabled it to growl a warning before we saw our enemies, and we were able to fight back all of them easily. Even Yui showed off the fruits of her training with Alice. She fought bravely with her short sword, proving that I was a little too worried about her.

Onward we went through the cave, slaying giant newts, legless caecilians, and axolotls. Unfortunately, we didn’t come across any treasure chests, but there were more than a few veins of iron and bronze ore, so we stocked up on everything we could find.

After twenty minutes, I was getting worried about my SP, but I didn’t want to chow down on raw newt, either. From the rear, Leafa said, “It’s kind of weird, don’t you think?”

“What’s weird?”

“We’re dealing with all of these amphibians, and there are so many newts and salamanders, yet there hasn’t been a single—”

Blaaaam!

There was a dry, distant echoing sound that came from farther in, causing Leafa to stop in the middle of her sentence.

I hadn’t heard that particular sound once in this dungeon—or in Unital Ring at all. Kuro paused, twitching, and began to growl. That had to be a gunpowder explosion: a gunshot.

“It’s Sinon!” I shouted, trying not to make too much noise, and looked over my shoulder. “Yui, can you tell which direction that came from?”

“I’m analyzing the echoes…It came from a hallway ahead and to the right!” she stated. I thanked her and picked up my pace. At the next fork, we went right and followed the tunnel as it curved and descended somewhat.

Suddenly, the cave widened ahead. We were near the top of a huge domed hollow. It had to be nearly fifty yards across. That was much farther than the torches were capable of illuminating, but I could see the overall size of the dome because of some kind of luminescent moss growing on the walls.

A narrow sloped path ran from our location along the wall to the floor of the dome. The floor was split between damp rocks and dark water, and atop a boulder in the middle was a human silhouette.

It wore a tight-fitting suit of armor and a white muffler. In its arms was something like a long stick—a gun. There couldn’t be another gunner here by coincidence. We’d finally found her.

“Si—,” I started to call out but swallowed the sound.

Behind the gunner were more humanoid shapes. But though they were upright, they were not human. Pointed snouts, big round ears…Their heads were clearly those of mice. They carried weapons that looked like pitchforks. Their narrow tails swayed as they advanced upon the gunner. There were two…no, three of them.

“Sinon, behind you!!” I called out, descending the steps on the side of the dome as fast as I could. Kuro and the others followed close behind me.

The gunner, Sinon, looked up and then behind her. There was no more than fifteen feet separating her from the ratmen. She could shoot one of them, but the other two would skewer her with their weapons.

“Ryaaa!”

I leaped halfway down the path into a shallow pool. The jump created a huge splash and took a few of my HP, but I didn’t care. I pulled back, preparing to throw my torch at the closest ratman to Sinon.

“No, Kirito! They’re not enemies!” I heard her shout, and I hastily adjusted my grip on the torch. The panther was about to leap on another one of them, so I told it, “Kuro, stop!”

The panther hit the brakes, and the three ratmen shrieked “    !” and backed away toward the wall. There was another hallway mouth there, a different one from the way we’d come inside.

My eyes met Sinon’s as she stood atop the boulder. She had light-blue hair that was slightly pointed at the ends, and sharp, catlike eyes—it was undoubtedly Sinon. But the rifle she was holding looked really old-fashioned and wasn’t all that similar to her usual weapon, the PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II. Assuming that the Hecate was over her Equip Weight limit, much like my Blárkveld and Excalibur, where did she get this gun? But it wasn’t like that mattered now.

“If these ratmen aren’t the enemy, then who are you fighting, Sinon?!” I demanded as Lisbeth, Yui, and Leafa reached the floor of the dome. Sinon’s expression softened when she saw them splashing through the puddles, but it didn’t last long.

“Get up out of the water, everyone!” she shouted. “Preferably atop tall rocks!”

Her tone brooked no argument, so I held my questions for later and started to clamber up a nearby boulder. But before I could get up, I heard a splash nearby.

Something was approaching under the water at tremendous speed. There was no time to avoid it; something hit my right ankle. I’d been bitten—no, grabbed?

Suddenly, my foot got wrenched aside, and I fell into the water. The torch flew out of my hand and fizzled out. With the sword in my right hand, I tried to sever the ropelike thing wrapped around my ankle, but I couldn’t reach. It was going to drag me into the depths—

“Growwr!” Kuro snarled and plunged headfirst into the water, then emerged holding the thing that was pulling me in its fangs.

It was not a rope. It was some kind of slimy, pink tentacle thing.

“Big Brother!”

Leafa lifted her katana and activated Sonic Leap. Shwa! She split the surface of the water in two. It was a perfectly boosted attack, performed with great skill by her real-life expert swordsmanship. The glowing green blade struck the tentacle Kuro was pulling—but did not sever it.

Lisbeth’s steel katana sank a few inches into the pink tentacle but stopped there. The rubbery appendage twanged and bounced back.

“Aaaah!” “Grrarp?!”

It threw Leafa and Kuro back together with a massive splash. But their attack paid off, because the tentacle let go of my ankle and sank back into the deeper water.

I helped Leafa up and got atop the rock for good this time. Yui and Lisbeth retreated to different rocks, and Kuro leaped up next to me in a single bound.

“What was that, Sinon?!” I gasped.

The gunner brandished her old-fashioned rifle and replied, “It’ll pop out of the water soon! Keep your eyes peeled. It moves fast!”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than there was a loud splash, and a dark shape leaped out of the water on the distant side of the pool. It was large, about six feet long…and if its extremely long and powerful legs stretched out, it could uncurl to twice that length. The front legs, meanwhile, were weak and small, and its head was a part of its torso.

The gigantic creature leaped from puddle to puddle with dizzying speed, then landed and stuck to the wall of the dome. Lisbeth, Yui, Leafa, and I all cried the same word at the same time.

“Frog!!”

Aside from the size of it, everything about the monster was perfectly froggish. It had large, bulging eyes and a diamond-shaped torso. Its legs folded in the middle and ended in long, flared fingers that looked like suckers.

At last, I understood what Leafa was trying to say before we heard the gunshot. We had seen lots of newts and salamanders—but no frogs.

“Hey, lucky you. Here’s the frog you wanted,” I said, staring up at the signature amphibian stuck to the wall.

“I didn’t want there to be frogs.” Leafa pouted. “Especially gigantic ones…”

“That’s got to be the boss of this cave…”

I wasn’t just guessing about that. I’d taken a tentacle attack to my right leg, so I could see the ring cursor over the giant frog’s head. Its individual name was Goliath Rana. All of the previous monsters we’d met, including Kuro, had descriptive Japanese names, but this one was in English, which I assumed had to mean something. Assuming it was actually English, of course.

“…Goliath means ‘giant,’ right? What’s rana?” I murmured.

Yui replied, “I believe it’s the name of the family of true frogs. In Japan, they’re labeled as red frogs.”

Sure enough, the body of the giant frog was dark red, and its eyes flickered like flames.

The Goliath Rana’s bulging eyes blinked, and it began to climb the wall at a relaxed pace. The more it climbed and the steeper the negative angle became, the more eerily weightless it seemed, a cow-sized shape refusing to fall.

“Wouldn’t this be the time to shoot it, Sinon?” I asked, realizing my suggestion was probably unwanted.

The gunner kept the rifle at her side without budging. She stared up at the frog and spat, “I’ve shot it several times already. But its back is too tough for these musket bullets to pierce.”

Thanks to The Three Musketeers and such, I knew that muskets were an old-fashioned kind of gun. But you couldn’t call them “rifles,” because there wasn’t any rifling on the inside of the barrels. This made me wonder where she’d gotten such a thing, but this wasn’t the time to be asking irrelevant questions.

“…Can you manage to shoot the Hecate with extra help?” I wondered.

She shot me down at once. “Nope. We can’t get the angle while it’s on the ceiling, and when it’s on the ground, it’s moving too fast to aim at.”

“Good point…”

I was still curious about the ratpeople behind us, but as long as they weren’t hostile, I could find out the answer later. This was the time to figure out how to beat the Goliath Rana.

“Remember, Kirito, for most of the frog-type monsters in Aincrad, the weak point was the stomach,” noted Lisbeth, holding her mace.

“Good point. Let’s get it to expose its belly before attacking.”

“But how?” asked Leafa.

“Ummm…”

Just then, the giant frog reached the very top of the hundred-foot-tall dome and looked down at us with its creepy eyes, completely upside-down.

“Here it comes!” Sinon shouted right as the frog’s powerful legs launched it off the rock and straight at me with blinding speed.

“Aaaah!”

I did a backflip out of pure instinctual reaction to avoid the hit, but the rock I was standing on got obliterated, pelting my body with stone shards. I lost only 3 percent of my HP, but it would have been much worse if not for my metal armor. And without a single potion to use, any accumulation of damage would eventually prove fatal.

The others hadn’t lost any HP, fortunately. But then I realized I was forgetting something important. I backed farther away, called up the ring menu, and hit the INVITE icon in the communication tab, then slid down to Sinon’s name. She immediately accepted, adding a new abbreviated bar to the list in the upper left corner of my vision.

The Goliath Rana remained in place for about three seconds after its meteoric crash, then began to move again. It jumped into a nearby pool of water and vanished.

“On top of the rocks!” Sinon instructed, so we jumped onto nearby boulders again. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Yui and Kuro climbing up, then asked Sinon, “So its attack patterns are a dive into the water, followed by a tentacle attack, then climbing to the ceiling and diving down? Just those two?”

“For now. And that’s its tongue, not a tentacle.”

“Oh…that makes more sense.”

So when the Goliath Rana grabbed my ankle, it wasn’t trying to drown me but eat me. If I had only one life to live in Unital Ring, I was going to do everything in my power to avoid going out like that.

After enough time waiting atop the rocks, we lured the frog out of the water again, where it began to climb the wall. We didn’t have an avenue to attack yet, but if we avoided the dive attack, at least we wouldn’t take major damage…But that wasn’t the right line of thought. Each one of its dives was destroying a safe rock to stand on, so we would eventually lose our defense against its tongue attack.

“Liz, Leafa, once we avoid the dive, we’ve got to use sword skills before it moves again. Try to aim for the underside of its body to flip it over.”

“Okay.” “Got it.”

“Sinon, Yui,” I continued, “follow up when the frog’s stomach is exposed. Kuro, protect Yui.”

“Roger that!” “Yes, Papa!” “Grawr!”

I felt sure that the two girls understood my point but wasn’t as positive about the panther. Here was hoping, though.

The giant frog’s suckered limbs made their way up the rock wall with ease. Another ten seconds until it reached the top again. Could we use the materials on hand to fashion a kind of trap where it was going to land? Like making a line of spiked logs—assuming such a thing existed in the Woodworking skill…

“Kirito!” Sinon shouted, startling me out of my thoughts. The Goliath Rana wasn’t yet to the top of the dome, but its legs were bulging with tensed power.

“Kwah!”

I jumped backward desperately, right as the frog kicked off the wall. It obliterated the boulder before my eyes like a cannonball. Fist-sized chunks of rock struck my shoulder and leg. They dented my iron armor and caused notable HP loss.

Bastard!

I entered the stance for Rage Spike—a low thrusting skill—before I landed. You usually had to lean forward as far as possible right over the ground, so executing the proper motion while in the air was a very high-level technique.

My sword took on a pale-blue sheen as soon as my feet hit a shallow puddle. The instant the skill activated, I leaped forward, boosting the action. Water frothed to the sides as I charged at the throat of the briefly stunned frog.

Without missing a beat, Leafa came in from the right and Lisbeth from the left. They were using skills that targeted low, according to the plan. With this many attacks happening at once, there was no way we could fail to flip over the frog, no matter how big it was.

And in less than a second, my confidence turned to horror.

The Goliath Rana, which looked like a tiny mountain up close, suddenly flattened, as though all of its bones had vanished. It squashed itself absolutely horizontal against the ground, hiding its neck and belly. But I couldn’t stop the sword skill. My sword hit the frog’s snout, Leafa’s katana and Lisbeth’s mace hit its shoulders, and the dark-red skin dented inward.

It felt like slicing a huge blob of rubber. The tip of my sword sank into it, but I didn’t feel like I was cutting anything. Then there was a huge resistance pushing back until it overpowered the thrust of the sword skill.

All at once, the three of us yelped as we were hurtled backward. There was no way to defend when your body was thrown into the air. The frog’s mouth opened. Its vicious pink tongue withdrew, tensing, ready to spring forward like a fleshy spear.

Blaaaam!

A huge roar assaulted my eardrums. Sinon had fired her musket. The bullet split the frog’s tongue, sending crimson damage effects spilling everywhere. It lost less than 10 percent of its HP, but the frog croaked and fell backward, exposing its soft-looking throat.

“Yaaaa!” “Raaaar!”

Yui executed the sword skill Vertical, and Kuro charged, its huge fangs exposed. Sword and teeth cut at the frog’s throat from either side. There went another 10 percent of its HP.

Yui’s and Kuro’s simultaneous attacks might have done modest damage, but the real benefit was that they extended the toppling effects of our offensive. The frog landed on its back in the water, still exposed.

We have to add on! But Liz, Leafa, and I were still struggling from the knockback effect. The frog’s short front legs and massive back legs flopped and flailed, as though it were going to leap upright again soon. Sinon was reloading and couldn’t fire again yet.

This combination was largely a product of coincidence and probably couldn’t be recreated a second time. If we missed out on the chance to extend this rally, our hopes of winning got smaller. I clenched my teeth, desperately trying to right myself. I reached out with my left hand, scratching at the empty air with my fingers, but my avatar cruelly continued to topple…

“Keeee!”

A high-pitched screech filled the air.

It wasn’t the frog, and it couldn’t have been any of us. Was it a fresh add—a new monster joining the fight? But what I saw leaping forward into the fray was not amphibian in nature. It was small, clad in simple clothes, and holding a rusty pitchfork in both hands—the trio of ratmen who had completely vanished from my mind.

They rushed to the flipped-over Goliath Rana and stabbed its pale belly deep with their pitchforks.

“Errrbit!” the frog roared furiously, jerking and contracting its entire body and bounding upright again like a spring-wound toy. The ratmen yelled “  !” and retreated to the edge of the dome.

They didn’t seem to be consistent participants in the battle, so having this brief bit of extra damage inflicted was a huge help. The HP bar of the frog was down 40 percent and had gone from white to a much yellower shade.

The Goliath Rana, now upright, leaped with a splash toward the wall, where it began to climb. Liz, Leafa, and I scrambled to our feet to prepare for one of its dive attacks.

After that sequence of events, it seemed clear that the Goliath Rana battle was one where it was difficult to hit its weak point, but once you did, there was a ton of damage to inflict. We could beat it after just two more times of flipping it over—maybe once, if we were lucky. But to do that, we needed to inflict damage on its mouth.

“Sinon, aim for the mouth!” I shouted. Sinon finished up reloading and said, “Got it.”

To Lisbeth, I instructed, “When it dives for us, whack its head with your mace! It’ll knock you back, but it’ll give us a chance to attack its tongue…I think!”

“You thiiink?!” she howled but recovered quickly, squeezing the handle of her mace. “Fine, then! Let’s do this!”

In tense fights that required great concentration, having a moodmaker like Lisbeth was a major help. That was a personal skill I could never replicate, I knew.

“Leafa, Yui, Kuro,” I continued, “use your strongest sword skills when the frog flips over! Just watch out for its rear leg kick!”

“You got it!” “Yes, Papa!” “Grar!”

The three of them were ready. I glanced back toward the wall behind us for one final instruction.

“You folks, be ready to do that again, too!”

I was speaking to the trio of ratpeople. They did not respond. I had no choice but to trust they understood, because I had to focus on the top of the dome. The Goliath Rana was already 70 percent of the way up the wall. It could dive at us at any moment.

Next time, I’ll dodge it right, I told myself, staring at the frog. Its limbs stopped moving. Those bulging eyes turned red.

But the next moment, something happened that I did not see coming.

Five or six warty bulges on the Goliath Rana’s back protruded farther outward and shot deep-red flames. They diminished quickly but maintained their strength from that point on, flickering in place. I had no time to wonder what was going on before the frog opened its mouth and pointed at the floor of the dome.

It was over seventy-five feet away. The frog’s tongue was long but not that long…

…Right?

What appeared in its gaping mouth was a glowing red circle. There were complex symbols inside the figure.

“A magic circle…?!” I gasped.

Leafa drowned me out, crying, “Look out, everybody!”

Before the words had left her mouth, an enormous ball of fire belched from the frog’s mouth. I jumped to the right on sheer instinct, grabbed Yui, and dived into the nearby water.

There was a roar, and red filled my vision. Waves of heat broiled my back, lowering my HP bit by bit.

Once the explosion subsided, I stood up with Yui in my arms. “Is everyone all right?!”

Sinon, Lisbeth, and Leafa called back in the affirmative, and Kuro growled fiercely. The frog’s fireball had evaporated one of the pools where it hit the floor, but nobody had been hit directly by the projectile. The ratpeople against the wall were fine, if clearly shaken by the event.

Up above, the Goliath Rana was still in the same spot, bulging and retracting its throat. It didn’t seem likely to descend for the time being.

“A frog that shoots fire? It’s like a slug with salt attacks…,” I griped. Lisbeth retorted “You can’t just make up sayings like they’re…Actually, that does make sense.” So my language skill retained its dignity, but the state of the battle was worse than before. The only long-range attack we had was Sinon’s musket, so if the monster kept shooting fireballs from the ceiling, the fight would slip further out of our grasp.

It wasn’t like we had to defeat this frog. As long as we escaped to the eastern side of the Giyoru Savanna with Sinon, we were fine. But that would mean climbing the sloped path around the wall up to the tunnel mouth, high up in the dome. The frog was unlikely to let us pass.

The sloped path…

“…Guys, I’m going to rush up the side of the wall and use a leaping skill to knock the frog down. You follow up the same way we said earlier!” I said, seizing on the idea I’d just had. My companions looked nervous, though.

“But then you’re going to fall down with it, Big Brother. You might die if you fall from that height…,” Leafa worried.

“I’ll be fine,” I reassured her. “I won’t take any damage if I fall where the water’s deep. This is the only way.”

“…”

She closed her mouth, but the concern in her green eyes did not go away. Truth be told, I wasn’t positive I could manage to fall into a spot of water deep enough to save me.

It was a desperate gamble, but as I lowered Yui to the ground to prepare, she abruptly announced, “No, Papa! I’ll do that part!”

Shocked, I stammered, “N-no, you don’t need to…”

“You have the highest attack of the party, so you should perform the follow-up on the vulnerable spot, not the first strike.”

“But, Yui, you can’t use Sonic Leap…”

“If I head back into the tunnel and get a running start, I can reach it with Vertical!”

“But…”

It seemed like the only thing I could do was offer rebuttals. Yui looked me in the eyes and said, “Papa, I don’t want to spend my whole life being protected.”

“…”

The earnest look in her eyes struck me as being very similar to Asuna’s. And though I couldn’t say for sure, I guessed it was probably similar to mine, as well.

“…All right. Go ahead,” I told her and set her down.

A fair distance away, Sinon shouted, “It’s moving again!”

I looked up at the dome and saw the giant frog plodding along horizontally. It was probably going to shoot another fireball. Perhaps it might aim at Yui as she was trying to climb the slope.

Lisbeth broke through my contemplation. “I’ll pull its aggro! Just let her go!” She struck her round shield with her mace. Little ripple effects appeared from her shield, which meant she must have acquired some kind of taunting skill at some point.

The Goliath Rana stopped moving and began to pivot.

“Here I go!” Yui cried and took off running with her short sword in hand. Even I was stunned at the speed with which she leaped over rocks and puddles. She turned at the wall and sped up the path to the tunnel mouth.

The frog twisted its upper half backward and opened its mouth wide. The direction made it clear it was targeting Lisbeth.

“Get back, everybody!” she instructed.

I dutifully retreated, shouting, “Make sure you dodge it, Liz!”

“Trust in the quality of my shield!”

Does that mean what I think it does? I wondered, right at the moment that another red magic circle appeared in the Goliath Rana’s mouth, shining brightly.

With an air-shaking roar, the beast shot a flaming projectile from its mouth. But Lisbeth stood her ground. She held the round shield up with her left arm and held her mace behind her.

The shield was made with the premium steel ingots she’d made from melting down Blárkveld. In keeping with the high Blacksmithing proficiency of its creator, the shield had to have a high defensive quality. But it couldn’t possibly defend against a fire attack from a dungeon boss without damage.

My right foot tensed, ready to push me forward into action. But I grabbed my knee with my hand, holding it in place. If I jumped forward and got caught in the blast, I might not be ready to attack the frog after it fell. I had to trust in Liz and Yui and let them do what they were determined to do.

The eighteen-inch flaming ball struck the shield directly. It flashed, warping, billowing out red flames and black smoke that hid Liz from view. I shielded my face with my arms to protect against the explosion.

In the upper left, I saw Lisbeth’s HP bar dropping. Down it went…70, 60, until it was below 50 in a blink…then stopped at around 40 percent.

“Liz!” I shouted, looking up.

Curled up in the center of the blast radius, Lisbeth lifted her thumb to reassure me. She could have darted out of the way and probably defended against it more successfully, but she took the hit to ensure it couldn’t possibly be redirected toward Yui.

As for Yui, she was nearly to the top of the slope winding around the edge of the dome. Even I would have a hard time sprinting up the narrow ledge without a handhold of any kind. But Yui was pulling it off with aplomb—not because she was an AI but because we had raised her to have a real heart and real courage.

Once she reached the top of the path, she darted into the tunnel to give herself some running space to make the leap toward the frog.

“Rrrbit…,” the Goliath Rana croaked, turning around so it could face the tunnel. That was bad…If it attacked with its tongue, it might knock Yui out of the air when she jumped.

“This way!” shouted Sinon. She pointed her loaded musket at the frog stuck to the ceiling of the dome and promptly pulled the trigger. The striker sent up sparks, and a moment later, the gun bellowed.

The bullet struck the Goliath Rana directly in the eye.

“Gribbaaaw!” the frog shrieked, turning once again.

Then a figure in white burst out of the tunnel.

She had a short sword readied at her right shoulder, her long black hair streaming behind her. The weapon was glowing blue, but the light was flickering. Executing a sword skill in midair when your stance wasn’t solid was going to be very difficult for Yui, who hadn’t practiced doing that, but she was managing to keep the effect glowing so far.

“Yaaaa!”

Her fierce war cry reached us down at the bottom. Once her right foot was out into the air, Yui activated Vertical. The game system boosted her small body, shooting her forward and leaving a brilliant slice in the air. The tip of the sword homed in on the frog’s side. While it did not cut through the skin, the shock of the attack pulled the suckers from the frog’s toes off the wall.

The frog’s rubbery, resilient skin bounced Yui backward. The frog then followed her, falling off the ceiling and waving its limbs wildly in the air.