Sword Art Online Progressive 4

  “I knew it!!” I shouted, grabbing Argo by the arm. The danger circles were forming directly overhead, like a targeting reticle.

  This time it was not an arm that burst forth through the stone, but an enormous foot. Just behind me, a bare black foot, size 200, stomped onto the floor. The shock wave of the impact nearly took me off my feet, but I just managed to stay upright.

  “Kii-boy, if there are two arms, that means…”

  “I know!!”

  I kept running, watching the ceiling. Sure enough, the lines wound together, forming another target.

  “Here it comes!!” I shouted, but the blast drowned it out. The second foot stomped down harder than even General Baran, sub-boss of the second floor, sending more ripples through the floor. This time we were ready for it and leaped over the shock wave safely, then hit the brakes as we turned around.

  Near the center of the hundred-foot-wide chamber, the two arms and legs stood like creepy towers. We had evaded the clutch-clutch-stomp-stomp combination, but since we ran toward the wall, we were now fifty feet from the stairs. It was hardly distant if within a safer environment, but in this battle, it was an endless expanse.

  For the moment, the lines on the floor and ceiling and the giant limbs were still, so we could either try to sprint for the stairs now or watch carefully for a third arm or leg, or something else entirely.

  “Don’t move, Kii-boy.”

  “Huh?”

  I started to turn toward her, but another “Don’t move!” command froze me. I held my breath, wondering what she was talking about, given that the lines weren’t moving.

  “Look down very slowly, without moving your feet.”

  “O-okay,” I obeyed, looking down at my feet with the bare minimum of facial and eye movement. There was black floor, blue lines, and my leather boots. “I’m looking…And?”

  “Look closer. See how your feet and my feet are just barely not touching the blue lines?”

  She was right. All four of our feet were touching nothing but flat floor, without intersecting any of the lines. But at its narrowest, there was less than an inch gap between our shoes and the lines, so any move would cause us to step on them.

  “…So stepping on the lines causes those target circles to appear and summon the giant hands and feet?” I asked.

  “That’s what I think.”

  “…And if we move without stepping on the lines, we can get to the stairs without being attacked?”

  “That’s what I think.”

  Still, it was easier said than done. It would be one thing if the lines were in a lattice pattern, but they flowed and twisted in random arrays, and the spaces were only big enough to hold a single person at their widest, while barely an inch apart at their narrowest. Even carefully tiptoeing along, it would be extremely difficult to return to the staircase without stepping on a single line.

  In that case, maybe it would be best to just make a break for it and expect to be attacked…but then again, that kind of desperate thinking is what gets you in trouble…

  The floor trembled again. I looked forward in panic, but it wasn’t an attack. The four limbs were retracting back into their respective surfaces. Apparently, if none of the lines were broken for long enough, the trap would reset.

  Well, we’d just have to sneak our way back to the stairs, I decided, and turned to suggest this to Argo—but the next words to be spoken didn’t come from me or her.

  “Hey, you all right?!”

  It was Hafner, who led the other nine up the stairs into the chamber. Twenty feet pounded the lines, causing four target circles to appear simultaneously on the floor and ceiling.

  “Weird, the boss hasn’t shown up yet?” Shivata squawked.

  I drowned him out by screaming, “Evade! Evade!!”

  If I’d had time to be accurate, I would have said that only those who saw the circles of blue light under their feet needed to evade, but it was all too sudden.

  Point-three seconds after that, the raid members showed admirable reflexes in leaping back. But as the ten members had been bunched close together, Shivata and Lowbacca collided and fell in the process. And due to some cruel law of the universe, Lowbacca was one of the four who had stepped on the lines first; a target circle appeared like a menacing eyeball beneath the two where they fell.

  Go-go-go-gong! Two enormous arms thrust out of the ground, and two enormous legs fell from the ceiling.

  The right hand clenched empty air. The legs slammed fiercely against the stone floor.

  And the left hand closed on Shivata and Lowbacca, lifting them high into the air.

  “Nwaah?!”

  “Whoa!”

  Their surprised shouts were cut off by the shutting of the hand’s fingers. These were two full-grown men, so unlike with tiny Argo, their limbs were sticking out, still in view—but there wasn’t enough room to escape.

  Because they were in the raid but not my party, their HP bars were visible in an abbreviated form. Still, the sight of the little horizontal bars bleeding downward only accelerated my haste.

  Their damage wasn’t as rapid as Argo’s, thanks to their high defense and HP, but the real trouble was the armor-breaking effect of the grabbing attack. Shivata was the indispensable tank of A-Team, with his extensive experience as a heavy shield user. If he lost his armor, our battle plan would fall apart.

  I just need an item that can freeze time for a minute—even thirty seconds! I wished frantically.

  Given that we could stop the limb attacks by not stepping on lines, it was possible for this boss fight to go easier than usual, if we executed it properly. It would help us pause the battle, giving us a moment to drink recovery potions.

  But I didn’t have time to share that info with the others yet. I wanted to order them to rush back to the stairs, but they weren’t going to run away with Shivata and Lowbacca trapped like that. Liten and Hafner already had their weapons out, preparing to battle the towering arm. Meanwhile, the arm and legs that missed in their attacks were returning to the floor and ceiling.

  The instinct to fight wasn’t wrong, but normal attacks would not undo the squeezing trap. You needed a sword skill above a certain level of power, I suspected, but with multiple panicked fighters using huge attacks in such a narrow space, it might lead to a collateral damage disaster. But who to command and how?

  As my brain ran in overdrive, something hit my eyes like a meteorite. I had crossed glances with a pair of hazel-brown orbs.

  Asuna. The only person standing still amid the chaos, waiting for me to say something.

  I delivered the shortest order I could to my partner, fifty feet away.

  “Parallel on the arm!!”

  She nodded without missing a beat and held up her Chivalric Rapier, already drawn. Her sword skill Parallel Sting started with a forceful step forward. It carried her past Liten and Hafner, hitting the black stone arm with two lightning-fast thrusts.

  The attack emitted bursts of light, and the same roaring sound as before issued from the ceiling. The fist opened, liberating Shivata and Lowbacca. They fell from thirty feet above, and Liten and Hafner did their best to catch them.

  All four of them did lose HP, but the biggest news was that they’d escaped without losing any armor. That was a relief, but the tension wasn’t over. The other limbs had already withdrawn, and new target circles were forming beneath Nezha’s feet and over Okotan’s and Naijan’s heads, closer to the staircase.

  “We can’t escape now!” Argo shouted by my side.

  I suspected she was right. The lines on the floor were spaced farthest apart toward the wall and bunched up closer as you approached the stairs. It was impossible now for all of us to get to the staircase without stepping on any.

  “Everyone, run to the closest wall!!” I shouted at maximum volume, and within a second, everyone was sprinting. The next moment, a hand burst out of the circle next to the stairs, followed by two pounding feet. I sucked in a deep breath for another command.
br />   “Once you’re at the wall, stop and make sure you’re not stepping on any lines!!”

  The rest of the group looked down as they ran. The problem was that the lines were currently reconfiguring, making evasion impossible. Eventually the movement slowed until it was possible to track with the eyes, then slowed more…

  “Now!! Avoid the lines and stop!!” I shouted for the third time. Within a small window, everyone else came to a halt.

  I held my breath, looking back and forth between the floor and ceiling. No target circles yet. None yet, none yet…

  “Ah…” came a quiet voice from nearby.

  Nezha, who had been running in my direction, was standing on one foot, waving his arms in an attempt to regain balance. There was a fairly large gap near him, yet for some reason, he was hesitating to put his raised foot down there.

  In an instant, I understood why.

  He had been assigned a minor FNC (full-dive nonconformity) status by the NerveGear, meaning that he had difficulty with depth perception in this virtual world. That was why he’d given up on close-range combat to become a blacksmith. He didn’t have trouble with walking or running, but the finer skill in judging the distance between his feet and the lines was a bit beyond his grasp.

  “Hang on a bit longer!” I called, careful not to step on any lines myself as I approached him. When the chakram thrower leaned over and nearly fell onto the floor, I grabbed his outstretched hand and held him up.

  “You’re okay, just let your foot down there…Right below, that’s it. Good job.”

  “S-sorry…”

  Nezha’s balance was returned. At long last, I could let out a heavy breath of relief.

  We had successfully managed to get all twelve people to avoid stepping on the lines, giving us a much-needed pause. We couldn’t let this moment go to waste.

  I wasn’t going to ask pointless questions about why they’d come up. The scouts had lost HP, and there were huge booming sounds coming from above—of course, they charged up the stairs.

  “Everyone who suffered damage, drink a pot while you listen! Those arms and legs belong to the floor boss!” I announced. I could see Hafner’s eyes bulge as he tilted a bottle to his lips. “You see those blue lines on the floor? Step on them, and the lines on the floor and ceiling start moving around randomly, creating target circles either below or above the person who stepped on it! When the lines stop moving, the arms come up from the floor to grab you, and the feet come down from the ceiling to stomp you!”

  “…So you’re saying that as long as we keep straddling the lines, the arms and legs won’t attack us?!” Agil shouted from the other side of the chamber, quickly catching on. I couldn’t see his expression a hundred feet away, but the echoes from the enclosed chamber were audible at least.

  “That’s right! At max, it can attack with two arms and two legs at once! If the arm grabs you, it’ll lift you up about thirty feet and do simultaneous damage to your HP and armor durability! But if you hit it with a sword skill about equal to a two-hit attack from a one-handed sword, it’ll let go of its prey!”

  Once I made sure everyone had heard that, I continued, “I don’t know how powerful the legs are because we didn’t get stomped yet, but I’m guessing their damage is worse than the arms! And like with General Baran, they create outward shock waves when they stomp, so you might get tripped up if you don’t avoid them!”

  Again, the other ten acknowledged understanding. I consulted my memory of the last few minutes for anything else to say, but I couldn’t think of anything.

  “Well, that’s all!!”

  A stunned silence fell over the chamber.

  A few seconds later, Asuna spoke up from about twenty-five feet away. “So if we stay just like this, the boss won’t attack, but we can’t hit it, either?”

  “I…I think so. The silver lining is that if we had a full raid party, there’s no way we could get all those people to avoid stepping on lines, but with our smaller number…”

  I considered whether we should intentionally step on the lines so we could begin attacking, or if we should attempt to get back to the stairs to go down.

  But just at that moment, as if the game system itself refused to allow such a relaxed moment to pass in the boss chamber, the lines in the center of the ceiling, directly over the stairs, began to move on their own. We were all frozen in place, so we could do nothing but watch in horror.

  Gong, go-gong! The ceiling began to jut down in a complex shape.

  The black surfaces started connecting, lining up along the glowing blue boundaries, forming a symmetrical object. It was a jutting forehead, sunken eye sockets, a square nose, and a horizontal mouth.

  The rough, blocky “face,” like something from the early days of 3-D game engines, was about ten feet tall from the forehead to the chin. The black sockets suddenly lit up with pale circles of light, and an eerie, complex symbol glowed in the center of the forehead.

  As twelve pairs of eyes watched in silence, six HP bars appeared one after the other over the giant head. The first bar looked slightly shorter because of the sword skills we’d used on the arm, but the damage was paltry.

  At last, the proper name of the fifth-floor boss appeared in a ghostly white font:

  FUSCUS THE VACANT COLOSSUS.

  “The name…is totally different from the beta…” I whispered, aghast.

  As if in response, the two pupil-less eyes moved, and the angular mouth opened wide. The blue symbol on the forehead turned an ominous red.

  That was bad news, but I didn’t have time to issue a defensive command. It wouldn’t have helped, anyway.

  The cave-like mouth let out a bellow loud enough to shake the entire labyrinth tower, and every member of the raid wobbled to some degree. Fortunately, no one stepped on any lines, but that was only a temporary relief. The moment the boss had bellowed, a defense-lowering debuff icon appeared under all our HP bars, and the previously still, blue lines burst into movement again.

  The unavoidable defense-lowering debuff was bad, but it also broke me out of my shocked paralysis. I roared my orders to the group:

  “Spread out and watch the lines carefully! Dodge them whenever possible, and if you step on one, check the floor and ceiling for the circles and get outta the way if you see any! If you can, attack the limbs when they appear!!”

  I heard fierce, bold responses from around the chamber. At a much quieter volume, I told the nearby Nezha, “The gaps are bigger along the wall, so it’s easier to avoid the lines! When they stop moving, aim your chakram at that symbol on the giant’s forehead!”

  “G-got it!” he responded, and ran to the wall nearby. The dizzying speed of the lines was slowing now. Next, I gave orders to Argo and Asuna.

  “I’m going to trigger a line on purpose—get ready to use sword skills!”

  “You betcha!”

  “All right!”

  I watched the lines on the floor closely. We’d gone to the trouble of grouping up tanks in A-Team and attackers in B-Team, but if the boss continued this irregular attack pattern, sticking to formation would only work against us. We’d just have to individually avoid the lines and find chances to counterattack on our own.

  The countless lines sliding over the black floor slowed down…slowed down.

  “…Here we go!” I shouted, stepping intentionally on one with my right foot. The lines reacted like a living creature, forming a target circle around my foot. Once it fixed into place, I leaped out of the way.

  A black arm passed right before my eyes, tearing through the air. Asuna, Argo and I closed in from three directions.

  I raised my new sword to deliver the Vertical Arc two-part skill, ensuring I wouldn’t hit either of my companions. Asuna did another Parallel Sting, and Argo executed a three-part attack with the claw on her right hand.

  Enveloped by a tricolor blast of light, the giant black arm flinched in pain. The face up on the ceiling roared in anger, and I noticed that the first HP bar was vis
ibly lower than before.

  The injured arm sank into the floor, and the lines repeated their dizzying dance. While I waited to try the same strategy again, I checked on the “defense down” icon from earlier, but it wasn’t blinking yet. The effect was frustratingly long-lived.

  I sensed movement on the ceiling and looked up to see the boss’s mouth opening wide. The symbol on its forehead was glowing red. It was going to roar again—and would certainly cause a different debuff this time. I tensed, realizing it was pointless anyway.

  But just before the boss could bellow, a little silver light shot across the room.

  It was Nezha’s chakram, whirling softly as it flew. It struck the boss’s forehead with pinpoint accuracy, and the symbol returned from red to blue. The giant face shrank back, shutting its eyes and mouth and retracting into the ceiling a bit. Meanwhile, the rotating chakram made a hard turn back toward the direction from which it had been thrown.

  So far, everything about the boss had been changed from the beta—except for the weak point on its forehead. Just being able to cancel out the debuff attack was huge on its own. I resumed watching the lines on the floor and held out a thumbs-up in Nezha’s direction.

  The lines stopped. This time the target circle appeared on the ceiling, but the idea was the same. I avoided the golem leg plunging down from above, and the three of us hit it with sword skills at the same time.

  As the foot rose up into the ceiling again, I heard Hafner’s voice from across the chamber calling out, “Affirmative! We’ll try attacking next!”

  Agil and Okotan chimed in:

  “We will, too!”

  “And us over here!”

  I scanned the room and took note of the different groups: Hafner, Shivata, and Liten were on the north side of the stairs; Agil and Wolfgang were on the east side; and Okoton, Lowbacca, and Naijan to the south.

  Heartened by the quick reactions of my fellow elites, I shouted as loud as I could: “I’ll leave it to you!! Give it hell!!”

  But even then, I was resigned to a grab or a stomp or two as they got used to the process.