Desperate to reach Asuna, Mito cut down one Little Nepent after another along the outer edge of the swarm.
Unfortunately, her choice of weapon worked against her.
As a scythe user, she had no proper movement or charging Sword Skills that could carry her through the mass of monsters, so no matter how quickly she attacked, she could not open a path wide enough to rejoin Asuna.
Worse, the scythe was a long weapon.
Once the Little Nepents managed to close the distance and wrap their vines around its shaft, Mito lost the reach that normally gave her an advantage and found herself in danger as well.
The encirclement continued to contract, forcing her farther and farther back.
Inside the swarm, Asuna repeatedly activated «Linear», trying to punch her way through, but every attempt failed.
Sword Skill chaining in SAO allowed only a 0.4-second interval between consecutive skills.
To link several Sword Skills together without interruption, the next activation had to be completed within that tiny window.
Even Kirito, at his absolute limit, could only manage four consecutive chains.
Asuna, who was still a beginner, had no chance of accomplishing anything comparable.
When the number of Little Nepents they could kill was far lower than the number continually converging on them, the battle inevitably became a dead end.
Mito was gradually forced toward the edge of a low cliff.
While adjusting her footing to avoid another attack, she stepped onto an unstable section of ground.
A skull icon flashed beneath her feet.
[DANGER] The earth gave way before she could react.
Mito lost her balance and tumbled down the slope.
She struck the bottom hard enough to enter a brief stun state, and her HP plunged straight into the red.
Once she regained control of her body, she immediately used the recovery items she was carrying, but even after exhausting what she could spare, she only managed to drag her HP back into the yellow zone.
Her gaze snapped toward the party status display in the upper-left corner of her vision.
Asuna’s HP had already fallen into the red.
Mito tried climbing back toward her using the wooden structures jutting from the cliff face, but quickly discovered that there was no viable route.
When she turned toward the path leading back to the top, she found that it too had been blocked by a mass of Large Nepents.
She attacked with everything she had.
It still was not enough.
The monsters kept pouring into the narrow path.
Before Mito could clear the enemies directly in front of her, another wave of red cursors appeared farther behind them.
Above the cliff, Asuna had run out of recovery items.
The last potion she had used had briefly raised her HP back into the safer yellow zone, and at around the same time, the pressure from the Little Nepents seemed to lessen.
After desperately cutting down enough of the monsters around her to reduce their numbers to something manageable, Asuna suddenly noticed something strange.
The remaining Little Nepents looked afraid.
Their expressions, though formed on grotesque plantlike bodies, showed an almost disturbingly human fear.
Asuna had no idea what had frightened them, but she was not about to waste the opportunity.
She immediately began finishing off the monsters that had fallen into the frightened state.
Then the light around her dimmed.
At first she thought a cloud had crossed the sun.
A shadow appeared on the ground in front of her and rapidly expanded.
Asuna looked up.
Something enormous was falling from the sky.
The creature that crashed down was dozens of times larger than even a Large Nepent.
The impact sent a thick cloud of dust rolling outward, and Asuna instinctively recoiled.
A gigantic hand emerged from the haze.
It seized several Little Nepents near her and casually stuffed them into a massive mouth filled with teeth.
The same monsters that had nearly killed Asuna only moments earlier became nothing more than food in the creature’s grasp.
Their struggles were completely meaningless.
Above the monster appeared its name.
Tyrant Ape King.
The sheer presence of the enormous beast was even more overwhelming than the swarm of Little Nepents had been.
Asuna’s HP was still only in the yellow zone, and one look at the monster was enough to make the thought of resisting feel almost absurd.
Only then did she understand why the number of Little Nepents around her had suddenly dropped so sharply.
They had been terrified of this thing.
And some of them had already become its effortless appetizers.
…
Below the cliff, Mito stared helplessly at Asuna’s party status as her friend’s HP plunged back into the red.
Memories flooded through her mind—the promise she had made to Asuna, the time they had spent together, and every small moment since they entered this world.
She could not bear the thought of watching her best friend die in front of her.
Mito swept her left hand through the air.
The party interface opened.
Asuna’s HP had dwindled to a sliver.
Two buttons appeared before her, blue and red.
Mito’s hand trembled.
Slowly, her finger moved toward the red button marked Leave Party.
“Are you really going to press that?” A voice suddenly came from beside her.
“What’s waiting ahead of you is hell.” A hand reached in from the side and gently closed around Mito’s wrist before her finger could touch the button.
Mito looked up through tear-blurred eyes.
For one desperate moment, it felt as though she had finally found something to hold on to.
Standing beside her was the boy she had once looked at as though he were some kind of monster.
Tears continued spilling from her eyes, catching the sunlight as they fell through his shadow and glittering like tiny fragments of crystal.
Beneath the hood of his cloak, Shindo’s eyes looked as deep as a starless night.
His expression carried the same composure she remembered from the Town of Beginnings, but this time it was accompanied by an unexpectedly reassuring smile.
“Don’t worry.” His grip loosened from her wrist.
“I’m pretty strong.” A red scabbard dropped into Mito’s hands.
Shindo drew the newly acquired Anneal Blade, and a sliver of sunlight ran along its fresh edge.
Ripples seemed to spread through the air around him as the sword erupted in brilliant pale-red light.
Then he moved.
Several fully charged activations of «Linear» chained together in rapid succession, leaving streaks of crimson light suspended behind him.
For an instant, Mito was reminded of lightning branching across a distant sky during a storm—the flash arriving first, followed only afterward by the sound.
Then the mountain path before her erupted with noise.
From the foot of the cliff all the way to the top came the repeated crystalline crashes of monsters shattering apart.
…
Asuna’s eyes had gone dull with despair.
The Tyrant Ape King’s enormous jaws filled more and more of her vision, its tusks descending toward her as it prepared to snatch her up as roughly as it had the Little Nepents.
Then a crimson streak came crashing in from the left.
The attack slammed into the side of the Tyrant Ape King’s head and knocked it violently away.
The beast released a deafening howl of pain.
Before its massive body could fully recover its balance, two more arcs of sword light flashed across it.
They carved a broad, slightly curved V through its body and the surrounding air.
«Horizontal Arc».
The sheer force of the two-hit Sword Skill twisted the Tyrant Ape King’s enormous body sideways in midair.
Light compressed across its form, drawing inward for a fraction of a second before the entire monster exploded.
A glittering rain of crystalline fragments scattered through the sunlight.
“Are you all right, Yuuki Asuna—” Shindo caught himself.
“Actually…
Asuna.” He turned around.
His hood slipped back, revealing a boy framed by sunlight.
The brightness blurred the edges of his silhouette, while a faint, reassuring smile rested on his handsome face.
For a moment, he looked almost like some knight from an old Western story as he extended a hand toward her, the Anneal Blade held behind him.
Unfortunately, its scabbard was currently with Mito.
“You’re…” The Tyrant Ape King’s death had happened so abruptly that Asuna’s mind could not keep up.
One moment she had been certain she was about to die, and the next she was alive, staring at someone offering her a hand.
It took two or three seconds before her thoughts finally started moving again.
“Problem Student-kun?” “…?” That was not the response Shindo had expected.
“Asuna!” Mito finally reached the top of the cliff.
The moment she saw Asuna alive and unharmed, the tears she had only just managed to control began pouring out again.
She let the red scabbard of the Anneal Blade slip from her hand and ran straight toward her friend.
The two girls threw their arms around each other and burst into tears.
“Thank you so much, um…
Problem Student-kun.” Apparently Shindo’s reputation at the private Naoetsu Middle School was considerably worse than he had imagined.
Most of that reputation came from his habit of ignoring lessons and being repeatedly called out by teachers despite maintaining exceptional grades.
Since his academic performance remained outstanding, the school had largely tolerated behavior that would have earned anyone else constant reprimands, and Shindo had long since grown accustomed to treating his teachers’ complaints as background noise.
Between his habit of doing whatever he pleased and the school’s willingness to overlook it because having a top student made their academic record look good, the other students had gradually saddled him with the nickname “Problem Student.” For the record, Shindo ranked first in their year at Naoetsu Middle School.
Mito ranked second.
Asuna ranked third.
And despite those rankings, two years from now, the real world would probably place all three of them in exactly the same category of “problem students” anyway.
“Shindo.” He awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck.
“It’s pronounced Shindo.
Shin as in prudence, and do as in crossing over for others.” Shindo still corrected them despite his obvious discomfort.
He had never liked having his independent personality reduced to the label of “problem student.” That was simply how he had always been; it had nothing to do with whatever reputation the school had attached to him.
Mito and Asuna looked at the suddenly awkward boy standing in front of them.
The relief of surviving was still visible in their tear-streaked faces, but for the first time since the battle, both girls smiled.
Then they answered together, their voices soft.
“Okay—Shindo-kun.”