Every hoofbeat landed with the force of an explosive detonation.
When one enormous hoof finally emerged from the heart of the swirling portal and revealed itself as something solid and real, a chill ran through the entire raid.
“Everyone—!!!” Diavel’s voice thundered across the arena.
“Concentrate all firepower on Baran!
Finish it now!
We don’t have much time!” He drew the large one-handed sword from his waist, then glanced behind him toward Yuna.
“Yuna-san, we’re counting on you.” “Mm.” Yuna nodded firmly.
Her song spread through the Boss Room.
Several beams of differently colored light appeared around every member of the raid, cleansing the various negative status effects still clinging to them.
More than forty players charged the rampaging Baran the General Taurus at once.
Whatever happened, they had to kill Baran before the final Boss completely materialized from the teleportation vortex.
Baran lowered its horns and launched «Charge» directly at Shindo.
The roar of displaced air filled his ears and tore violently at his cloak.
Shindo raised Splitter with both hands.
Points of pale-red light gathered along the nodachi’s blade.
The instant before Baran’s horns could smash into his body, Shindo released «Vertical Arc», amplified by his high STR and the physical benefits of «Martial Arts».
Two trails of sword light crossed before him.
They carved directly through the weak point between Baran’s horns, splitting the exposed area into four uneven sections with a deep cross-shaped wound.
BOOM—!
Baran’s massive body crashed to its knees at Shindo’s feet.
Light contracted around the Taurus.
Then its entire body burst apart before him, scattering into a shower of brilliant fragments like falling stars.
Shindo immediately raised his eyes.
Reflected in their starless-night darkness was a silhouette growing clearer by the second.
Its size increased with almost absurd speed as more of its body emerged from the vortex.
Six green HP bars.
A frame far thicker than either of the two Tauruses they had just defeated.
Limbs of monstrous proportions.
And an enormous hammer gleaming with such intense golden light that it looked as though its entire surface had been covered in gold leaf.
Asterios the Taurus King.
“Everyone fall back!
Reform the raid!” They had already been fighting for hours.
Even Shindo and the others, who had maintained a comparatively comfortable margin throughout the encounter, were beginning to feel the exhaustion setting in.
Compared with the battle against Illfang, the intensity of the Second Floor raid had risen exponentially.
When Asterios’s final hoof stepped out of the teleportation vortex, the creature was at last revealed in its entirety.
Its body was coal-black.
It towered over the arena like a fortress.
Like a mountain peak.
Or perhaps, more appropriately, like the legendary Bull of Heaven, Gugalanna, from ancient Mesopotamian myth.
“Shindo-kun…” Diavel stepped onto the front line.
Even as commander, he could no longer remain safely behind the battle formation.
The raid was too exhausted, and the monster before them was too dangerous.
“Yeah…” Shindo stared upward.
“We’ve still got to deal with this monster.” He knew far too much about Asterios’s capabilities to underestimate it.
Everyone had restored their HP into the safe green zone, but standing before this creature, the word safe did not feel particularly meaningful.
“We’re going in, everyone.” “Right!” “Yeah!” “Mm!” The determined voices of his companions sounded around him.
Feeling the unbroken resolve behind their answers, Shindo could almost swear that even this body built entirely from code and data was running hot with blood.
His fighting spirit surged.
He advanced at an almost leisurely pace, Splitter’s edge dragging lightly across the arena floor and carving a straight line through the stone.
Then the nodachi twisted.
Its tip left a single sharp mark against the ground.
Shindo launched forward like a bullet released from a chamber the instant its safety came off.
He raced toward Asterios the Taurus King.
The high-AGI players surged past him one after another like meteors crossing a midsummer night sky, each trailing the luminous tail of «Sonic Leap», the higher-level charging Sword Skill they had begun activating.
And Shindo himself followed like another falling star.
A celestial body.
A burning corona extending outward and sweeping across the heavens, every movement carrying the fierce momentum of his rising battle fury.
Asterios answered them with a blast of scorching breath from nostrils buried beneath a dense, curling beard that fell almost to its waist like a black thundercloud.
Six enormous horns lowered.
Protected beneath its royal garments and heavy armor, the Taurus King charged directly into the raid.
Dust erupted across the entire Boss Room.
Gray clouds rose and collapsed upon one another until much of the arena disappeared behind them.
Within that desolate haze, only a handful of things remained clearly visible— Yuna’s song carrying above the battlefield.
The fleeting yet ceaseless flashes of Sword Skills.
And, deeper within the massive shadow of Asterios’s body, two blood-red eyes burning through the dust.
The scene felt bleak and almost mournful.
As though the only emotion remaining within it was rage.
Shindo knew what awaited them.
During Asterios’s sixth HP phase came «Sweep» and «Trample».
In the fifth, a battlefield-wide «Numbing Detonation».
The fourth brought «Charge» and «Ram».
The third— Lightning Breath.
Then, during the second HP phase, the Boss would begin chaining its Sword Skills together relentlessly.
And once its final HP bar was exposed…
Berserk.
Every one of those stages demanded caution.
“Nezha!
Argo!” Shindo shouted over the battle.
“Hit the crown!” The Chakram and Argo’s Throwing Needles curved through the air.
Their trajectories converged directly on the gleaming crown atop Asterios’s head.
There was an old saying that whoever wore a crown had to bear its weight.
For Asterios, that was almost literally true.
Whenever its crown was struck, the enormous Boss momentarily froze and entered a slowed state.
It was the one reliable weakness they had.
Eventually, Argo exhausted her supply of disposable Throwing Needles.
From that point onward, the responsibility for restraining the final Boss fell almost entirely to Nezha—the only player among them with a reusable long-range weapon.
Unlike Argo’s needles, the Chakram was not consumed when thrown.
That alone demonstrated how valuable the rare weapon truly was.
The rest of the raid lacked Skills capable of launching them high enough to reach Asterios’s head consistently, so they were forced to attack the narrow gaps between its armor plates instead.
Catch.
Throw.
Throw.
Catch.
Again.
And again.
Nezha eventually lost count of how many times he had sent the Chakram spinning toward the crown.
But he did know one thing.
He was happy.
Truly, unmistakably happy.
He was fighting beside Shindo.
Beside the Legend Braves.
Beside every member of the front-line raid.
He was no longer the helpless FNC player who had been left behind while everyone else moved forward without him.
For Nezha, that alone was enough.
…
Asterios’s HP had fallen into its third phase.
Shindo and many of the others had been pushed into yellow.
Against a Floor Boss whose attacks could cover nearly the entire arena, the raid was forced to Switch with extraordinary frequency.
Even with that constant rotation, nearly two-thirds of the players were hovering precariously between safe and dangerous HP levels.
Their mental stamina was being consumed just as severely.
Then Yuna’s «Chant» rose once again.
Buffs spread throughout the raid.
Shindo and the others launched another desperate offensive, every player fighting with the same increasingly urgent desire— End this already.
They attacked harder.
Faster.
More recklessly.
Until at last Asterios entered its second HP phase.
The Taurus King’s Sword Skills began coming at an increasingly brutal frequency.
The raid’s HP bars were steadily forced toward the threshold of red.
Much like the battle itself, everyone’s health began seesawing endlessly along the border between warning and outright danger.
“Diavel—!!!” After restoring his own HP above the safety line, Shindo called for one final assist.
Then, from the rearmost edge of the formation, he began running.
He charged toward Asterios at the highest speed he could manage.
«Sonic Leap» accelerated him to extraordinary velocity, carrying him across the first half of the arena almost instantly.
Diavel understood.
He sheathed his sword.
Then both hands closed around the grip of his shield.
Using every point of STR he could muster, Diavel hurled his kite shield through the air.
Shindo stepped onto it.
The shield became his first platform.
His body rose.
Then Agil provided the next.
Another improvised foothold appeared beneath Shindo’s boot.
One step.
Then another.
He climbed higher and higher, dozens of feet above the arena floor.
His cloak snapped violently behind him.
He looked like a meteor ascending rather than falling.
Shindo leaned forward.
Splitter rose vertically beside him.
Under the gaze of every player in the Boss Room, he landed atop the crown of Asterios the Taurus King.
Then his sword descended like a storm.
«Sharp Nail» erupted into a three-hit combination.
One strike.
Two.
Three.
A section of Asterios’s royal crown was carved away.
The Taurus King went berserk.
Unable to properly throw Shindo from its head, it instead began preparing Lightning Breath.
Thick blue-white branches of electricity erupted throughout the arena like an enormous tree made from lightning.
Even from his position atop the Boss, Shindo’s HP began gradually falling from the residual shock.
Below him, Kirito and the others took advantage of the opening.
They used the handle of Asterios’s enormous hammer as a makeshift path and climbed onto the Boss’s body, attacking every weak section they could reach.
And because its crown continued taking damage, Asterios’s movements slowed dramatically.
Every action seemed to play out frame by frame, like a film running at a fraction of its intended speed.
The opportunity Shindo had created became the turning point that finally allowed them to end a battle that had already lasted several hours.
“All parties attack!” Diavel raised his weapon.
“Everything you’ve got!
Bring the Boss down!” The remaining front-line players lifted their swords, axes, spears, and other weapons.
Then they charged Asterios the Taurus King without hesitation.
…
In the end, the Taurus King fell.
For the second time, the front line had achieved a perfect Floor Boss clear without a single casualty.
But unlike the explosion of celebration that followed Illfang’s defeat, the cheering this time was pitifully weak.
Nobody had the energy left.
Players collapsed across the now-empty Boss Room wherever they happened to be standing.
Some lay flat on their backs.
Others sat on the floor with their backs pressed together, too exhausted even to speak.
After several hours of unbroken tension, simply allowing their minds to relax felt almost intoxicating.
Anyone with POTs remaining drank them as though they had just finished an extreme physical workout and were dying of thirst, emptying bottles of brightly colored potion one after another.
Even Diavel had lost his usual effortlessly handsome appearance.
His curled blue locks hung untidily against his cheeks, making him look less like a triumphant knight and more like a ruined aristocrat who had just survived the collapse of his estate.
“Shindo-kun…
Kirito-kun…” Diavel looked toward the two boys, who were somehow still capable of standing.
“You actually have enough energy left to move…” He stared at them in disbelief.
“Seriously, are your bodies built differently from ours?
Ah—wait.
Not bodies.
Is the amount of code making up your avatars just completely different or something…?” “Diavel, we get tired too.” Shindo did not even have the energy to pretend otherwise.
“It’s just that right now, I’d rather drag myself to an inn, collapse onto a soft bed, and sleep until tomorrow morning than spend the night lying on the freezing stone floor of a Boss Room.” “Then…” Diavel weakly raised one hand.
“Safe travels…” Lind, Joe, Nezha, and the others waved as well.
It was their temporary farewell.
Come to think of it, this was already the second time they had parted like this after clearing a floor.
The corner of Shindo’s mouth lifted faintly.
Then he turned toward the long staircase climbing upward.
This was the highest point of the Second Floor.
Beyond it waited the beginning of the Third.
Everything seemed ready to begin again.
Another floor.
Another cycle.
Yet something was different now.
Perhaps it was their state of mind.
Perhaps it was something else.
Whatever the answer, none of them could simply return to who they had been before.
The dark staircase spiraled upward.
Several members of the group climbed together.
“Once we reach the Third Floor, you could say Aincrad’s real story finally begins.” “Why?” “Because the Third Floor is where we’ll start encountering humanoid MOBs that look almost exactly like players, instead of the simple, mindless demi-human monsters we’ve mostly fought on the First and Second Floors.” Kirito stopped midway up the staircase.
He turned back toward Shindo and the others.
“This is where the real SAO begins.” His expression became unusually serious.
“Kayaba once described Sword Art Online as the light and echoes woven together by Sword Skills, and…” Kirito paused.
“A Concerto of Life and Death.” It was Kirito’s familiar voice.
And words Shindo remembered just as clearly.
For once, genuine relief warmed Shindo’s expression.
Despite everything his presence had changed, the timeline had not been thrown completely off course.
To him, that alone was reassuring.
In that case…
Shindo stopped climbing as well and turned toward his companions.
“What do you guys think?” Asuna raised one hand thoughtfully to her lower lip.
“If we’re talking about a concerto, the exact form changed somewhat depending on the historical period, but it’s generally based around an orchestra while one instrument—or a small group of instruments—takes the leading role.” She tilted her head.
“So couldn’t you describe it as music where the many support and respond to the few, rather than something that’s simply one against one?” “Like our Boss raids?” Mito immediately connected it to something familiar.
“Most of the players use their numerical advantage to support the smaller number of people directly confronting the Floor Boss?” “Maybe it means idiots who trigger treasure-room traps and get horribly mobbed by monsters.” Aiko supplied a considerably less charitable interpretation.
“Probably not.” Kirito shook his head.
“SAO may technically be a game, but this world is something Kayaba spent his entire life creating.” He cleared his throat.
Then he imitated Akihiko Kayaba’s unforgettable voice from the Day of Beginnings.
“‘I created this world because I wished to make it and observe it.
For that purpose, I invented the NerveGear and created Sword Art Online.
And now, my goal has been achieved.'” Once he finished the impression, Kirito returned to his normal voice.
“So I doubt the kind of world Aiko-san just described is what Kayaba actually wanted to create.” He gave a faint grimace.
“Because no matter how you think about it, that’s not exactly the kind of world anyone would dream of living in.” Aiko and Yuuki nodded together.
“That makes sense.” Yuna raised her hand like an earnest student answering a teacher’s question.
“Yuna thinks it’s about using songs to make everyone happy.” Nautilus immediately nodded.
“If Yuna says that’s what it means, then that’s definitely what it means.” “As for you, Shindo-kun?” Everyone looked toward him.
“Me?” Shindo thought for a moment.
“If I had to choose…” He smiled.
“I’d say it’s a story where a small number of heroes reveal abilities that set them apart, then lead everyone trapped inside SAO through one obstacle after another until they finally save them all.” Asuna and Mito immediately laughed.
“Hehe…
that sounds very Shindo-kun.” “Almost like you’re praising yourself.” “Hey, I never said I’m one of those heroes.” Shindo covered his forehead helplessly as more laughter joined theirs.
“For all you know, I meant Kirito.” “Then, Mr.
Extraordinary HERO…” The others’ gazes gathered on Shindo again, playful yet carrying an unmistakable trace of expectation.
“You’d better lead us all the way to the end.” Shindo suddenly found himself unable to deal with everyone’s attention.
So he reached over, grabbed Kirito, and pulled him directly in front of himself.
Now Kirito was the one facing their expectant stares.
“I was never a hero in the first place…” Shindo gave only a faint smile as he spoke quietly.
Then he lowered his head, turned away, and began climbing again.
Three steps became two.
Walking became running.
He disappeared higher into the darkness of the staircase— until his figure passed through another enormous doorway opening before him.