Part 3
“……Somehow, that was an amazing tale……”
Was the first thing Asuna murmured after «Queen of the Lake Ur?r» melted into shiny water droplets and disappeared. Tonkii ascended again —— this time gradually.
Her words were followed by Sinon’s, who seemed to have recovered her thoughts, talking as she moved her light blue tail,
“This is…a normal quest……right? But isn’t this assignment, the story too great? ……Once all the beast type evil-gods had been annihilated, the frost giants will invade the surface next, did she say this?”
“……Yes, she did.”
I nodded, then twisted my neck while folding my arms.
“But, would the management’s side go that far without any updates or event notices? For any other MMOs, any «Boss Invasion Event» would normally come with at least one week of advance notice though……”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Then, Yui who sat on my left shoulder flew to hover in the middle of us and said in a volume everyone could hear,
“Well, This might be just a guess, but……”
With a slight pause as if to think about what to say, she then continued,
“——This «ALfheim Online» has one major difference from other standard VRMMOs from «The Seed». That is, the game operation isn’t based on the feature reduced version of the «Cardinal System», but uses the same full specs version as the one used in the old «Sword Art Online».”
That was certainly correct. It wasn’t a story I wanted to remember, but ALO was created by a man whom was possessed by greed, in order to use some of the old SAO players in his illegal research, he copied the whole original SAO server. So the autonomous system operating the world «Cardinal» in ALO has the same capability as the one used in SAO, of course.
Yui looked around at our attentive listening faces, then added,
“The original Cardinal System has a few functions which had been cut out in the shrunk version. One of them is the «Automatic Quest Generation Function». It will collect legends and folklore of the world through the network, and continue to generate infinite amount of quests using proper names and story patterns.”
“W-What?”
Klein’s stubbly jaw dropped abruptly as he groaned.
“That means, that disastrous quest from pacific we did in Aincrad was created by system-sama?”
“……I can recall too many of them. At the time we reached the 75th floor, just those listed in the quest database of the information shop exceeded ten thousand……”
At one time, in order to earn the management fund, the guild had to seriously take on many of those quests, the KoB sub-leader said as she shook her head. Silica who was next to her stared to the distance and muttered,
“Also, I could hear this sometimes-myo. It was probably on the 30th floor, the slaughter quest to kill the ogres wearing strange masks and using chainsaws, but no matter how many times they were killed, the next week the quest would pop up on the bulletin board again. What legend did it come from though……”
For quests like those, I too have a lot in my memories, but at this rate, until we reach the ice pyramid, it’d be a meeting to complain about old Aincrad. So, in order the steer the topic back, I cleared my throat and said,
“That said, Yui, is this quest also created by the Cardinal System?”
“Judging from the behavior of the NPC earlier, the probability is high. It might be possible that the automatic quest generator that stopped until now had been restarted from the management’s side.”
Yui continued with a difficult face after she nodded to my question.
“If the story keeps progressing like this, the situation will end up in the worst state. That ice dungeon floats up to Alfheim above, Alne collapses, the evil-god class monsters popping up on the surface…… No, even worse……”
Her lips closed for a moment —— the AI girl then continued with a frightened expression,
“……According to the data in my archive, as ALO has included parts of the Norse mythology in the quest, it’d certainly lead to the so-called «The Last War». Not only do the frost giant tribe from Jötunheimr and Niflheimr invade, but those from the lower plane «Muspellsheimr», the flame giant tribe would also appear, and burn down the world tree…… That is……”
“…………«Ragnarök».”
Suguha —— Leafa, who loves legends and mythology, also has those kind of books in her room, said quietly. Immediately her emerald pupils widened and she shouted “But!”.
“Something like that…… The game system shouldn’t be able to completely destroy its own managed maps though……!”
What she said made sense. But Yui gently shook her head.
“……The original Cardinal System has the authority to completely destroy the map. Because, the old Cardinal’s final duty was to destroy the floating castle Aincrad after all.”
“………………”
This time we sank into complete silence, unable to say anything.
The next person who opened their mouth was Sinon, whom up till now was mostly listening.
“——If that «Ragnarök» really happened and it wasn’t the management side’s intention, isn’t it possible to do a roll back?”
“O……Oh, that’s it, that’s right.”
Klein nodded repeatedly. Simply speaking, «Roll back» was used to overwrite the current situation with backup data. It was mainly done when players gained unexpected benefits due to bugs or programming oversights. In this case, if Alfheim had been turned into scorched earth, although it wouldn’t affect individual player’s exp or items, nobody would want the whole place to be like Salamander territory’s «Burnt Land».
However, for some reason, this time Yui didn’t nod in agreement.
“It would be possible if the management’s side did backup all the data manually and kept the physical media in a separated location…… however, if they used Cardinal’s automatic backup function, depending on the configuration, it could be possible that the roll back would only affect player data and not include the fields.”
“………………”
Again, all members went silent for two seconds. Klein suddenly shouted “Oh yeah!” then opened the system window. But just after that, he held his head and said “No good!”.
“……What did you do?”
Lisbeth asked while turning to the katana user’s miserable face.
“Well, calling a GM, just wanting to confirm if they know about this situation . But it’s off hours for human support now……”
“End of the year, Sunday, in the morning too……”
I sighed, shook my head, then looked into the sky.
The huge ice pyramid was quite close now. It’s three hundred meters wide on each side, if it pierced up through Alne it would certainly cause a great clamor. While half of its population had migrated to «Yggdrasil City» at the top of the tree, Alne was still the raiding base for the advanced dungeons on Alne plateau, the central trading market for all races, along with its familiar crowded weekend nights, it was the town full of my profound memories.
“……When it comes down to this, there’s nothing but to do it, Onii-chan.”
Leafa held a big medallion hung on her right hand up high.
It was given by «Queen of the Lake Ur?r», a cleanly cut large jewel was inlaid in it. But now, more than sixty percent of the cut surface had sunk into pitch black darkness, not reflecting any light.
When the jewel was dyed in total darkness, it meant all of the beast type evil-gods had been completely annihilated without a single one left, and Ur?r would be stripped of all her power. At that time, «Frost Giant King ?rym»’s Alfheim invasion would begin.
“……That’s right. Initially we gathered today to raid that castle and get «Excaliber» anyway. It’s in our favor when the defense is currently weakened too.”
I nodded, then opened the system window and operated the equipment figure.
Long swords appeared hanging crossed on my back, one was humbly made by Lisbeth’s equipment shop, and the other was dropped from the 15th floor boss we defeated the other day in the new Aincrad.
Looking at my nostalgic back carrying two swords, Klein smiled from ear to ear and yelled,
“Alright! This is this year’s final big quest! I’ve decided, let’s get on the tomorrow’s front page of MMO Tomorrow!”
The target was somewhat realistic, so this time Lisbeth didn’t make a wry smile. “Oo?!” Everyone said in chorus, Tonkii under our feet moved its wings violently and cried “Krrr?n!”.
The aviation type evil-god increased its ascending speed and crossed the pyramid at once, its big body hovered along the entrance at the top of the pyramid. Leafa, who was the last person, jumped to the ice terrace, stroked Tonkii’s big ear and said,
“Just wait, Tonkii. We’ll surely take your country back!”
She then turned about and pulled the long sword hanging loosely on her waist. At the same time, we took our weapons out too, in front of the big twin ice gates which stood tall in front of us.
Just as Ur?r had said, there was no first guardian here like always, and the doors began to open. Exchanging glances with each other, we quickly set up a formation, with the front row being Leafa, Klein, and I; Lis and Silica were in the middle, while on the back row were Asuna and Sinon, we kicked the ice floor to begin running, and broke into the huge castle «?rymheimr».
In ALO, the upper limit of a party size was, strangely, seven people. The reason why it didn’t use six or eight like most other titles, until now, has never been officially told. That way, the maximum size of a raid party was 7x7 or forty nine people. The currency obtained from the monsters would automatically be distributed by the system function, as manual distribution would be very troublesome to calculate.
Well, from the seven people slot, if filled with only close friends, five would be pretty much fixed. With Asuna, Lis, Silica, Leafa, and I. All were high school students, furthermore, four went to the same school, and two even lived together, so the timing was easy to set.
The sixth and seventh slots could still be smoothly filled up, by the company employee Klein, coffee shop and bar master Agil, the senior bureaucrat Chrysheight, or Leafa’s real life friend Recon. Recon was also a high school student, he was part of the olden day’s «Yggdrasil Capturing Operation» and had been recruited by the Sylph lord Sakuya to help with scouting duty. Currently he was a permanent member of the Lord manor staff in Swilvane town, I had played together with him for a brief period of time when Aincrad was over the sky of the Sylph territory.
This time, I was glad the slot was filled with the bow user I met in GGO —— Sinon, however, there was still one unresolved problem for the party.
It was the lack of a mage. The only permanent member who had increased their magic skill was Undine Asuna, and as half was spent on her thin sword skills, her master leveled skills were only for support and recovery purposes. Leafa was also a spell fencer but her spells were only for enfeebling during combat. Then Silica had a little magic but her main focus was on support duty; Lis, of course, had spent more than half of her skills on smithing; Agil also had more than thirty percent on trading skills; then Klein and I had all our skill points focused on physical close combat, the so-called «Brain muscle» type. There was no one capable of casting attack spells.
Occasionally, when Recon, the Sylph dagger wielder with a mysterious build of very high dark magic; or Chrysheight whose freezing attack magic was at the lord class; joined as the seventh slot, the flexibility in combat was much wider. So lacking the fire power of a mage was really our weak point.
But that couldn’t be helped. Because most of us had migrated from SAO —— a world where magic didn’t exist. My one-handed straight sword, Asuna’s thin sword, Lis’ war hammer, Silica’s dagger, Klein’s katana, Agil’s axe, then Leafa’s long sword and Sinon’s bow, were all not just mere weapons, but could be exaggerated into considering them as proof of our existence. At this point, discarding our weapons to raise our magic skill was already impossible. Even knowing it wasn’t efficient, but all we could do was to trust our battle style that focused on physical attack, we managed to come this far with it anyway.
Still, we encountered dangerous situations occasionally.
“This is bad, Onii-chan, that gold one has high physical resistance.”
Leafa at my left side whispered quickly.
Before I could say anything after nodding to Leafa, «That gold one» brandished its extraordinary huge battle axe up high.
“Shock wave attack in two seconds! one, zero!”
Yui who sat on my head exuded a loud voice despite her small body. Following the countdown, the five people from the front and middle rows split up to the left and right, creating a gap. The blade of the axe swung roaring down, and created a shock wave, cut in a straight line, which passed through the gap and hit the wall on the other side violently.
It had already been twenty minutes since we broke into the ice castle «?rymheimr».
It was just as «Queen of the Lake Ur?r» said, the number of the enemies inside the dungeon was quite thin. The encounter rate of the small fry mob was almost zero. Half of the floor’s sub-bosses were also absent. However, the boss defending the hall in front of the stairs to the lower floor was there as expected, it was time to show our overwhelming attack power to the boss which once forced Asuna, Leafa, and I to say “No way?!”.
Nevertheless, we somehow defeated the one-eyed boss on the first floor without twisting our hands, ran through the second floor, and managed to reach the boss room again, however——
What awaited for us there was the giant humanoid with the head of a bull, a large evil-god of the so-called «Minotaur» type. Moreover, there were two of them, the one on the right had its whole body in pitch black, the body of the other one on the left glittered with gold, the weapons they both used were battle axes with blades as large as dining tables.
As the first floor’s Cyclops boss was defeated easily by the icicle in the center of the room, even without magic attacks, I first thought that we were fine, but there was one problem. Apparently, the black one resisted magic, while the gold one would be physical resistant, and thinking that it was fine resulted in an unexpectedly high price to pay.
Then we should defeat the black quickly and after that, attack the gold with carefully set up battle tactics; however, the two bull heads, unexpectedly, seemed to be connected by strong bonds, when the black’s HP decreased, the gold would ignore the hate and come to protect it. During that time, the black behind it would curl up its body, it seemed to be some form of meditation power that could recover its HP.
After they did that once, we concentrated our attacks on the gold while the black was meditating, but as it had high physical resistance, its HP barely decreased. And of course we had problem with our HP, even though we could avoid the instant death attacks, the ranged attack’s splash damage was impossible to avoid; with the healing only by Asuna, it was obvious she wouldn’t be able to support us for long.
“Kirito-kun, at this pace, my MP will only last for about one hundred and fifty seconds!”
I heard Asuna shout from behind me, so I held up my right hand sword in reply.
In such an endurance battle, if the healer’s MP ran out, what awaited the party was total annihilation —— in other words a «Wipe». If someone managed to survive, it was possible to collect and resurrect the Remain Lights one by one, but it would require a lot of time and effort. However, in case of a wipe, of course we would have to restart from the save point in Alne. But the problem was how much time we had left——
As if she could read my concerns, Leafa who was next to me whispered again.
“The medallion is more than seventy percent in darkness now, we won’t have enough time if we «Death warp».”
“Understood.”
Nodding, I deeply inhaled and enclosed it in my stomach.
If this was the old Aincrad, I’d issue a withdrawal without a second thought. In that world «Betting on the possibility» was not allowed. But now in ALO, it was no longer a Death Game. Even if the Cardinal System turned the entire Alfheim into a scorched field, it would affect only one thing, which was the «game enjoyment». So in this case, I had to believe in my companions strength.
“Everyone, when it comes down to this, there’s only one thing we can do!”
Avoiding the gold Minotaur’s axe swing and affirming the gauge of the black Minotaur recharging its HP in the back, I shouted,
“This is all-or-nothing, concentrate our attack using Sword Skills on the gold!”
«Sword Skill».
Just that, was the game system that distinguished the former SAO from the others.
In March of this year with the «Aincrad implementation update», the management team had introduced Sword Skills into ALO. However, there were some modifications, one of them was the «Additional damage property». The current high ranked Sword Skills no longer have only pure physical property, but are equipped with magical properties of earth, water, fire, wind, darkness, or holy. Therefore, it would be able to pass through the gold Minotaur’s high physical resistance.
Of course, there were risks involved. Most of the consecutive Sword Skills had a long stun duration after finishing the move. If we took a direct hit from those battle axes in that time period, the HP gauge would be completely reduced to zero. There was a case where the front and middle rows could be instantly eliminated from the horizontal ranged attack as well.
However, everyone understood those risks and nodded immediately.
“Oh yeah! That’s what I’m waiting for!”
Klein, at the right wing, held his beloved katana high above his head. Jumping to my left was Leafa who also set up her long sword at her waist. At my back, Lis and Silica tightened their grip on their weapons in preparation.
“Silica, use «Foam» on the count of three! ——Two, one, now!”
I instructed based on the gold’s action, Silica then shouted,
“Pina, «Bubble Breath»!”
Normally, issuing a command to the pet didn’t ensure one hundred percent success rate regardless of the taming mastery. But I have never seen Pina ignoring Silica’s command before. This time too, the small dragon dancing in the air above Silica opened its mouth and released rainbow colored bubbles.
The bubbles slipped through the air and burst in front of the gold bull’s nose which was preparing its big attack using its battle axe. The bull with weak magic resistance went under a confusion effect for just a second, and stopped its movement.
“Go!”
As a response to my shout —— all the party member’s weapons aside from Asuna’s went into dazzling multi-colored light effects.
Why did the floating castle Aincrad’s creator Kayaba Akihito create the system of «Unique Skills» with such deviated power?
Until now I still couldn’t grasp the real reason behind it.
The skill «Holy Sword» that person possessed could be clear example. Being the leader of the strongest guild Knights of the Blood, the paladin who stood in front of many players with his absolutely unbreakable crossed shield, and those legends would be turned up-side down at the 95th floor, when that man would turn himself into the worst demon king of all RPG last bosses in existence.
In that moment, the «MMORPG with the main story driven by player’s action» would be realized. An Incarnating Radius —— realized world. In order to achieve his purpose of the world creation, it was necessary for him to continue being the absolutely strongest paladin. Even with «Holy Sword» and «Immortality properties», he also had to depend on the irregular power that was the «Over Assist».
But if just the unique skill such as the holy sword were sufficient, it would not be necessary to have an MMO where ‘The Hero was the only one who could confront the demon king’. Of course, it would lead to a difference in the player’s battle power, which wouldn’t be appropriate based on the rules of fairness.
Yet, he still gave «Dual Blades» and probably a few other unique skills to the players.
Those abilities outside of rules resulted in the unequal distribution of the resources, that guy even understood that it could distort how the world would progress along his plan. In fact, during my duel with Heathcliff for Asuna’s withdrawal from the guild, if I didn’t have the «Dual Blades» skill, he could have won without having to use the Over Assist. Recalling that moment of irregularity caused me to realize Heathcliff’s true identity on the 75th floor. By giving me the unique skill, his imagined world —— his story had to end at just three-quarters of the way.
In ALO’s world, in the rare moments that I held two swords, I always had a thought in a corner of my mind, Why?
At the same time, there was also a bit of guilt. Of course, I defeated Heathcliff on the 75th floor —— It was a victory I didn’t regret. If the game hadn’t cleared at that point, the victims of the incident would certainly have increased even further. Among those might be people dear to me. Or perhaps, even myself.
However, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. ‘Was it alright like that?’ and ‘Mustn’t we climb to the 100th floor and fight with the demon king Heathcliff there?’ No, not ‘must’. It was what I wanted to do, it was just my egotism, the worst egotism. That was why I hesitated equipping two swords in Alfheim.
——However, there was no «Unique Skill» in this world. The new management team had verified the enormous number of sword skills and removed some suspicious conditional skills from the system —— rumors said about ten skills were removed.
So I couldn’t use the dual wielding sword skills such as «Double Circular» and «Starburst Stream» anymore. While I could reproduce its movement without System Assist to ninety-nine percent, and I had proven it against both human and monsters, however, it couldn’t be used here. Because my self-made dual wielding skill version, although it could reproduce the technique’s power, it didn’t contain any magical attribute, so it was ineffective against the high physical resistance gold Minotaur.
However, «Using one handed sword skills while equipped with two swords» had one advantage —— as Leafa said «A lead tipped shinai was like terribly cheating a hundred fold».
Being hit by the special move «Bubble Breath» from the little dragon Pina, the gold Minotaur was stunned for about a second, in front of it was me, Klein was on the right, Leafa on the left, and from both sides Lis and Silica were also there, we all charged in at the same time.
“U……ooo!”
Everyone roared, then drew the highest leveled sword skills we learned. Klein’s katana was wrapped with a rampaging flame, Leafa’s long sword created a flashing gale, Silica’s dagger had water spray moving around it, Lis’ mace emitted a groaning lightning flash. In addition to that, from behind, the arrows glowing with its ice arrowhead flew in rapid succession, accurately piercing at the tip of the nose which seemed to be the bull’s vital point.
At the same time, my right handed sword glowed in an orange light, and I assaulted it with all my power.
Five high-speed continuous thrusts then cut downward, upward, before another full force upward cut. The one-handed sword eight combo sword skill «Howling Octave». Its attributes were forty percent physical and sixty percent fire. Within the one-handed sword category, it was in a high tier. So of course, the stun after the move —— the skill delay was also long, however,
“…………!!”
With a voiceless yell, my consciousness had detached from my right hand after releasing the attacks. The movement command output from my brain to the AmuSphere was to cut off everything for a moment. My next command was to start transmitting commands to the left hand.
The right hand was on the auto-pilot thanks to the System Assist, it went on with the final upward cut. And, parallel to it, my left hand moved, drawing the sword backward. The blade released bright blue lighting.
The right sword made a deep cut at the exposed abdomen of the bull headed humanoid. Originally, this would impose a delay, causing my avatar to become rigid. However, the parallel activation of the sword skill of the left sword had overwritten the delay. The slash drew a horizontal arc and cleaved at the bull’s right abdomen.
It was not normal for my body, no, my left and right half of the brain to think of separate things at the same time. But here, my consciousness stopped its integration to the sword skill, leaving the right hand’s skill to the System Assist, while concentrating on the left hand.
The sword causing the horizontal cut and buried in the enemy avatar rotated ninety-degrees. I then pushed down on the grip in my hand, the blade jumped up and dissected the enemy vertically from the belly. Once the blade exited, this time I slashed down from above. It was the three hit heavy attack, effective against large type monsters, «Savage Fulcrum». Fifty percent physical and fifty percent ice.
On the verge of finishing the attack from the left hand——
I switched the output from my brain once again.
This timing, if it were too late or too early, could cause the skill to misfire, and cause the avatar to become rigid. The window of error allowed was less than one-tenth of a second. I noticed this skill combination by chance around three months ago, and I wouldn’t want to recall how much I have been practicing since then, but the success rate was still below fifty percent. With feeling and half praying, the sword in my right hand started to move.
“Ku……oo!”
Mounted on a short fervor, the blade glowed in light blue. From the vertical cut without a backward motion, then up and down combination, followed by a full powered upper cut. A high speed four hit combo «Vertical Square»——
Up until this point, the total number of hits was already fifteen. Approaching the number of a high rank Dual Blades’ skill. While it continued to be hit, the enemy would be under a delay so there was no need to think about the defense.
When Vertical Square started, the skill delay of my companions were already over.
“Zeeryaaaaa!”
It was obviously a war cry from Klein, as the second wave of concentrated attacks engulfed the gold Minotaur. The dungeon floor trembled, a large amount of the enemy’s HP gauge was suddenly shaved off.
Just before the final upper slash, I challenged the fourth «Skill Connect» without any hesitation.
?
This didn’t mean that any one-handed sword skill was suitable to lead in. The movement by the System Assist, and the movement of the non-attack arm, all needed to be in continuous motion to the next skill.
At the time the Vertical Square from my right hand unleashed, my left arm was folded toward the shoulder. From there, with just a slight twist of my body, the «pull the shoulder carrying the sword, the other hand moves forward» form was completed. The sword in my left hand was wrapped in a crimson light effect. The blade roared like a fighter jet and approached from behind, my arm shot out at an ultra high-speed. A heavy single strike attack «Vorpal Strike». Thirty percent physical, thirty percent fire and forty percent darkness.
Zgaaan!, a loud burst of sound emitted out, the sword penetrated the enemy’s abdomen. The huge body five times my size was knocked back violently. At that time, the second attacks from Klein and the others were already completed. This time, everyone’s avatar, including mine, was struck by the long skill delay.
The HP gauge of the gold Minotaur stained in deep red and decreased toward the left edge——
Then stopped and was left with only two percent remaining.
A cruel smile emerged from the bull head. The enemy had recovered from the delay, it drew its huge axe back horizontally. That must be a ranged attack using a high speed revolution which would result in an instant death if hit. A “jump back!” command resounded in my awareness, but my body wouldn’t follow. The axe heartlessly shone, the whirling wind occurred at the boss’ feet.
“No……oooooo!”
While my spirit screamed sharply, a blue gale ran past from my right side. The rapier held in its right hand released five consecutive thrusts at a speed so high our eyes couldn’t see it. It was the high ranking extreme speed thin sword skill «Neutron». With the damage properties of twenty percent physical and eighty percent holy, the remaining HP of the gold Minotaur, who was readying itself to swing its axe, was silently robbed.
The movement of the evil-god halted. From behind, the black Minotaur which had completed its HP meditation brandished its axe in triumph. However, the partner who had been protecting it up until now was screaming in a high pitched sound —— its huge body blasted in all directions with a stiff sound effect.
…………Eh.
The eyes of the black Minotaur widened in surprise, and looked at the seven people who had recovered from their skill delay.
“……Alright, in front, that’s the seat of honor.”
Klein said quickly while baring his teeth.
Part 4
The katana user finished off the black Minotaur evil-god by stabbing it with his special skill, as if releasing the grudges he had kept up to this moment. Not paying any attention to the drop items on the spot the enemy avatar had burst apart, he turned around and yelled,
“Oi Kiritard! What did ya do just now!?”
That question obviously referred to my usage of one-handed sword skills while equipped with two swords, and explaining in detail would be very troublesome, so I obeyed my inner thoughts and said while giving my most troubled face,
“……Do I have to say it?”
“’Course! After seeing something like that!”
It seemed I had pressed Klein’s curiosity button, and since it was unavoidable, I answered briefly,
“It was a skill outside the system, «Skill Connect».”
Oo?, was the sound which flowed out of Lis, Silica, and Sinon mouth; suddenly Asuna pressed her fingertips to her right temple and growled,
“Um……somehow, I got a strong feeling of Déjà vu……”
“It’s just your imagination.”
I shrugged my shoulders and clapped my hand on our healer-sama’s back, whom despite her support duty in the back row, had sneaked in during the battle with the gold Minotaur to deliver the killing blow.
“This is not the time for relaxed talk. Leafa, how much time do we have left?”
“Ah, right.”
After sheathing her long sword in its scabbard behind her waist, Leafa held up the medallion hanging from her neck. From a few steps away, I could see that the light within the jewel was almost completely lost.
“……At the current pace, we still have an hour or two.”
“I see. ——Yui, this dungeon structure has four floors right?”
I continued asking, so the little fairy sitting on my head the whole time responded clearly,
“Yes, the third floor is around seventy percent of the second floor size, the forth floor should be mostly the boss room.”
“Thank you.”
Stretching my right hand, my fingertips stroked my hair while I quickly considered the situation.
At this moment, in the Jötunheimr field far below us, the players accepting the «Frost Giant Tribe» side’s quest and the hunting of the beast type evil-gods had gained momentum. The number of quest participants would only increase and not decrease. The remaining time was estimated to be around an hour. The battle with the last boss —— probably «King ?rym» himself —— should take about thirty minutes, we wouldn’t be able to move to the third and forth floor within thirty minutes.
If there were a little more time, we could explain the situation to the players on the field, asking for their assistance in revoking the ongoing quest, but at this moment we didn’t have enough time to go back to the ground. The other alternative was to message the fairy lord requesting reinforcements, but organizing a force in the capital city beyond the mountain range, moving it to the Alne plateau, and reaching Jötunheimr from the dungeon stairs, by the time they did them the sun would have set.
In other words, with just seven people, we were in a hopeless situation. —— Or rather, factoring in the failure of «Queen Ur?r»’side quest from the Cardinal’s automatic quest generator function, ?rymheimr castle would surface on Alfheim, and trigger the start of a large-scale campaign quest «Ragnarök». The fault was obviously the character who inherited its function from its creator.
Anyway——
“……In that case, I don’t care if it’s the king of the evil-gods or not, we will just «Smash» him for good!”
Lisbeth said that with a slap on my back, the rest of them altogether went “Oo!” in agreement. Where did they get that recklessness from? While thinking that, I strongly nodded.
“——Alright, everyone’s HP and MP have fully recovered right? Then let’s clean up the third floor quickly!”
The combined voice echoed once more, seven people then kicked the floor, and started running, aiming for the boss’ room on the lowest floor, which was visible through the ice.
Just as Yui said, the third floor was clearly narrower than the second floor. It was natural for the lower parts of an upside down pyramid, but this place was quite a narrow and also had a complicated passage. For a normal clearing, we would be confused by the gimmick of the paths, but we had, enshrined on my head, the Navigation Pixie-sama which could give the latest model of an intelligent car navigation system a run for its money.
Our trump card accessed the map data, and with her instructions, we could run through the winding passage at full speed. Even the gimmick puzzles using levers, gears, or stepping switches were cleared without any time used to solve them. If this affair were to be observed from the outside, there would be no mistake for them to think that we were doing a time attack for the fastest clearing.
We ran into the sub-boss twice, but we still reached the boss room of the third floor in only eighteen minutes. What awaited us there had twice the size of the Cyclops and Minotaur from the previous floors, both sides of its long lower body had ten pairs of centipede-like feet, it was clearly the creepy evil giant, but it didn’t have much physical resistance. Of course its attack power was through the roof, so the HP gauge belonging to Klein and me were in the red so many times after being targeted by it. This battle, which made my stomach sore later, when I thought that either of us dying would lead to a wipe, went on for nine minutes.
During that time; Lis, Silica, Sinon, and Pina tried their best to cut down the giant’s feet one by one, I then finished it off with the «Skill Connect» which included multiple sword skills once it was unable to move. With our high spirits, we rushed into the fourth floor to beat King ?rym and his Niflheimr. Once we stepped into the passage leading to the boss room, we stopped, as in front of our eyes —— a scene came into view.
It was a cage made of elongated icicles on the wall’s edge.
Behind the fence caused by the stalactite growing sharply from both the ground and the ceiling, was a single figure. It was not of a giant’s size. As it had collapsed on the ground, its accurate size was difficult to tell, but its body should be about the same height as the Undine Asuna’s.
The skin was as white as the powdery snow lying thick around. The long flowing hair was a deep brown gold. The volume of the chest covered by the clothing that could be seen from her sorry state, it would be best not to say this out loud, as it could easily overwhelm all of our girl members. Both her hands and feet were shackled in the rugged ice.
The unexpected scene caused us to halt and feel worried, then the captive girl’s shoulders made a sudden but subtle shake, as she lifted her face, with the blue chains ringing.
Her pupils were also of the same tea gold, like her hair. Her face, if it was a player avatar, would surely be because of overwhelming luck when it was created, or the account was bought with the large sum of money. However, her face was sublimed with the western European beauty, which was quite rare in this game.
Blinking once, her long eyelashes moved down then up, the girl said in a fine voice,
“Please…… Help me……out of here……”
The katana user was sucked aimlessly toward the ice cage, I grabbed and pulled the bandana tail which dangled from behind his head.
“It’s a trap.”
“Trap.”
“That’s a trap.”
The last two were Sinon’s and Lis’s words.
Klein straightened his back and turned around, as he made a subtle expression while scratching his head.
“O-Oh……it’s a trap. ……A trap, right?”
For the katana user on his death bed’s sake, I asked in a small voice, “Yui?”. The pixie on my head promptly replied,
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