Mother's Rosary

  But as soon as that thought registered in her mind—perhaps from the very moment she first saw the vague shadow—Asuna was certain she knew who it was.

  The figure raced along the wall until it surpassed the reinforcement party and leaped off the wall to the floor, sparks spraying from the bottom of his boots as he slowed. He came to a stop in between the enemy and the Sleeping Knights, his back facing Asuna.

  He sported tight-fitting black leather pants, a long black coat, close-cropped but layered black hair, and a particularly large one-handed longsword on his back.

  This weapon was sheathed in a black hide scabbard imprinted with a white wyvern. That was the logo of Lisbeth Armory, a well-known shop along a main thoroughfare in Yggdrasil City. Asuna’s best friend had crafted that splendid sword of a rare metal only found in Jotunheim.

  The black-clad swordsman’s hand blurred as it drew the pale blue longsword from his back and jammed it into the stone floor at his feet with a tremendous ringing. Thirty veteran fighters came to a screeching halt, shocked still by his force of presence.

  Ironically, what he said next was extremely similar to what the ax-bearing gnome had just said to Asuna moments earlier:

  “Sorry, this area is off-limits.”

  His voice was loud and clear but devoid of intensity. It was met with silence not just from the thirty reinforcements, but also the twenty original guild members, as well as Asuna and the Sleeping Knights.

  It was a slender salamander at the lead of the reinforcements who was the first to react to this cocky claim. He shook his head in disbelief, long auburn hair waving.

  “Come now, Master Black. You don’t honestly think that even you can take on this many people solo, do you?”

  The swordsman, who had as many nicknames as there were ways to describe a person dressed all in black, shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know. I’ve never tried before.”

  The salamander, who appeared to be the leader of the guild alliance as a whole, snorted and raised his hand. “Of course you haven’t. Well, let’s see how you do…Mages, burn him.”

  He snapped his fingers. High-speed spell chanting emerged from the rear of the group. From their reaction speed to the clarity of their speech, they were well-trained sorcerers. Asuna’s instincts were to start casting a heal spell, but the twenty members of the lead group behind them would not allow her that much time.

  At that moment, the spriggan intruder turned at last.

  The invincible grin that pulled up his left cheek was the same one she’d seen countless times through several different avatars. But the next moment, an eruption of spells from behind him turned his smile into a silhouette.

  Yet Kirito the Black Swordsman did not show an ounce of consternation at the seven high-level attack spells hurtling toward him. It would have been pointless to dodge, after all—they were all single-target homing spells, and there was no escape in a corridor just sixteen feet across, where flight was prohibited to boot.

  Instead, Kirito lifted the sword from the floor to rest on his shoulder, where it began to glow a deep crimson—the initiation of a Sword Skill.

  The next moment, the corridor was filled with bursting color, a tremendous roar, and the shock of fifty-plus onlookers.

  The seven-part skill that Kirito unleashed, Deadly Sins, neutralized—no, cut through—all of the oncoming attack spells.

  “No…way…” Yuuki the Absolute Sword muttered. Asuna understood that feeling. But if you couldn’t handle someone who did the impossible, the improbable, the implausible, then you couldn’t handle the VRMMO player known as Kirito.

  This was a non-system-defined skill that Kirito had developed, which he called “spell-blasting.”

  Long ago, during the old Aincrad, Kirito liked to use a special skill he called “arms-blasting,” which was the accurate use of Sword Skills on weakened or fragile parts of his dueling opponent’s weapon, in order to cause the item to break. It was an incredible piece of pure skill, requiring superhuman reaction speed and precision—but cutting through spells in ALO was even harder than that.

  Attack spells almost universally had no physical form and resembled nothing more than a cluster of light effects. The only place they could be “hit” was at the exact center point of the spell. So a fast-moving spot the size of a pixel had to be hit with a Sword Skill, not a standard attack. Your ordinary physical weapon attack could not neutralize a magical attack. However, nearly all Sword Skills had some kind of elemental damage like earth, water, fire, and so on, which made them capable of colliding with magic. But because the system took control of the attack trajectory and speed when performing a Sword Skill, hitting the center of a spell was beyond difficult and into the realm of absolutely impossible.

  In fact, Leafa, Klein, and Asuna had joined Kirito on his attempt to master the spell-blasting ability, and they had to call it quits after three days. Kirito claimed that the only reason he could pull it off was his conversion to Gun Gale Online, where he had lots of experience cutting bullets with a sword. “Every high-speed magic spell is slower than a bullet from a live-ammo rifle,” he said with a straight face, which earned him three seconds of stunned silence from his friends.

  For these reasons, Kirito was probably—no, unquestionably—the only player in Alfheim who could pull off this feat. And he only practiced it in secret, never in duels or with a party, so the members of this mammoth guild had never seen it done before.

  “…What the hell…?” the long-haired salamander moaned, while his companions on either end of the corridor murmured similar sentiments.

  “He cut the spells!”

  “Sure it wasn’t coincidence?”

  “That’s the thing…”

  But true to their reputation as veteran players, the guild recovered quickly. At the salamander’s orders, the front fighters drew their weapons, the roving fighters readied bows and polearms, and the rear guard resumed chanting spells. This time they weren’t single-homing spells but multihoming and area-ballistic types.

  Kirito turned back and gave Asuna another nod, then held up three fingers on his left hand. It wasn’t a variation on the V-for-victory sign, of course, but a message that he would provide defense for three minutes. Even he didn’t think that he could defeat thirty players on his own.

  At last, Asuna understood why Kirito had shown up at this moment.

  When he heard from her that she’d be assisting the Sleeping Knights in beating the floor boss, he already expected the big guild alliance would run interference. So he probably hid at the entrance to the tower, watching for alliance activity. When he saw more people enter the labyrinth than the Sleeping Knights could handle, he tossed aside his personal safety to buy them some time.

  Three minutes. One hundred and eighty seconds. That amount of time passed in a blink at their forest cabin, but it was tremendously long in a PvP battle. She didn’t doubt Kirito’s ability, but could he really hold down so many players for such a long time? Should they send one of their seven to his aid…?

  Two things cut through her moment’s hesitation.

  First, Kirito reached around his back with his left hand to grab the hilt of a second sword, which he drew loudly and clearly. It was a frighteningly elegant longsword with a deep golden blade. This was not a player-made weapon. It was the holy sword Excalibur, a legendary weapon sealed in the depths of the floating labyrinth in the underground realm of Jotunheim. They’d attempted the labyrinth with as many people as could fit on the back of Tonky, Leafa’s flying monster friend, and were nearly wiped out entirely in the boss battle. But the sight of Kirito with his dual blades again gave him the aura of absolute dependability that made all that trouble worth it.

  The reinforcements backed away slightly at the sheer force of presence the golden blade held. As if waiting for that instant of hesitation, a hardy bellow issued from behind the back row of enemies.

  “Raaah! And I’m here, too, though I bet you can’t see me!!”

  Th
e gruff, inelegant voice belonged to the familiar katana warrior Klein. Asuna rose on her tiptoes and saw an ugly bandanna and spiked red hair over the heads of the enemy. So Kirito wasn’t the only one monitoring the labyrinth. But why did he show up so much later?

  “You’re late! What took you so long?” Kirito shouted from this side of the crowd. Klein yelped, “Sorry, I got lost!” from the other end. Asuna nearly wobbled and lost her balance.

  Lastly, she noticed a small figure waving to her from Kirito’s shoulder. It was their daughter, Yui, in her pixie form. The warmth of her adorable smile filled Asuna’s heart.

  Thank you, Yui. Thank you, Klein.

  I love you, Kirito.

  Asuna turned to Yuuki and whispered, “We can leave them to those two. Our job is to break through the twenty on the other side and make our way into the boss chamber.”

  “Okay, got it,” Yuuki said crisply, after several high-speed blinks. She turned and held her longsword high, preparing an immediate Sword Skill. As her weapon began glowing purple, the others readied their weapons as well—Jun and Siune on the left wing and Tecchi, Nori, and Talken on the right.

  The twenty members of the lead party and their gnome captain were confused at all of the rapid developments, but when they saw the Sleeping Knights start to go into action, they responded with admirable speed.

  Once she heard the deafening roar of magic and Sword Skills clashing behind them, Asuna shouted, “Let’s go!”

  With Yuuki at the lead point, the seven formed a wedge and barreled forward. Likewise, the gnome’s team roared and charged ahead.

  The two sides clashed, resulting in a shock wave of consecutive light flashes. In an instant, the battle was plunged into chaos, and the sounds of fighting engulfed their end of the corridor as it had the other side.

  Asuna knew from personal experience that Yuuki was a veteran dueler, but she was surprised to see that the other members still held their ground without an ounce of hesitation now that their foes had gone from monsters to humans.

  Jun’s two-handed ax and Tecchi’s heavy mace made good use of their weight to crumble the enemy’s formation, and Talken’s long spear and Nori’s quarterstaff snaked into the gaps that ensued. Meanwhile, Yuuki was making the best of her preternatural evasive ability to nimbly dodge the many strikes bearing down on her, then slip past the enemy’s guard and counter with decisive slashes.

  The Sleeping Knights fought with valiant skill against a group several times their number, but the enemy did not go down easily. The mages in the rear were casting continual healing spells to keep them going.

  As was unavoidable in a massive, chaotic scrum like this, all the members aside from Yuuki steadily began to lose HP to incidental hits. Asuna and Siune began to cast healing spells as one.

  Suddenly, two shadows slipped out of the group and sprinted for them. They were assassin types, with light leather armor and nasty, glinting daggers in hand.

  Upon realizing that they were, in fact, the same people who had been hiding in wait outside the boss chamber less than an hour earlier, Asuna instinctively changed her spell chant. She blazed through her specialty chant in just two seconds, and fine waterspouts rose from the sylphs’ feet and tangled them, throwing the two to the ground.

  She turned to Siune, who had just finished another healing spell, and whispered, “Can you manage the healing on your own?”

  The slightly taller undine nodded at once. “Yes, I think I can hold us together.”

  “Then I’m going to go take out the enemy healers.”

  More than a minute had passed since the start of the battle, and the roar of battle behind them was fiercer than ever before. Kirito and Klein had to be throwing themselves into the midst of the enemy battalion to protect against magic attacks, but without a healer focusing on them, they had no way of making up that incidental damage. He’d said three minutes, but she wanted to wrap up this group in two to make it up to them. They needed to focus on winning quickly.

  Asuna opened her window and hurled her wand into the inventory, equipping her beloved rapier instead. A band of silver light materialized around her waist, solidifying into a sword belt and scabbard of fine mithril.

  She drew the long, slender weapon with a fine ringing and charged at the two sylphs who were still grappling with her Aqua Bind tangling spell. With a few merciless attacks at critical points, she quickly eliminated all of their HP.

  Through the expanding cloud of their shattering remains, she peered at the close battle ahead. The churning sea of blades and attacks spanned the width of the corridor, but it seemed the right side was the thinner of the two.

  Asuna took a deep breath and plunged forward, dashing at full speed with her rapier held low against her waist. Once she was up to a good momentum, she bellowed at full volume so Yuuki could hear her, facing the opposite direction.

  “Yuuki! Dodge!”

  “Huh…? Wha—?!”

  Yuuki turned back and just leaped out of the way in time as she caught sight of Asuna’s charge. Beyond her, the gnome leader was paused with his ax pulled back, and Asuna thrust her rapier forward, leaning as far over as she could go.

  Numerous surges of white light leaped from the point, trailing around Asuna. Next, she felt her body begin to float. She was charging forward with such speed that the light trailed behind her like a comet.

  “Whoaaa!!”

  The gnome finally burst into motion, holding his two-handed ax sideways like a shield. But his attempt was just an instant too late, as the point of the rapier impacted the center of his body.

  He flew high into the air, as if some enormous, rampaging beast had thrown him. Most of his HP had been carved away by Yuuki’s sword already, and his body began to disintegrate and emit yellow light in midair.

  Asuna the white-hot comet did not slow down after her first victim but continued in a straight line toward the enemy healers in the back. Three or four more foes met the same fate as their captain, some flying high and others collapsing to the ground. This was the strength of Flashing Penetrator, a long-range rapier Sword Skill that fell in both the “elite” and “charging” categories. It was nearly impossible to use in a one-on-one duel, owing to the considerable running start it required, but it was an extremely useful tool for breaking through enemy groups like this.

  After piercing the wall of armor and shields and coasting for several more yards in the air, Asuna finally landed on the labyrinth floor. She screeched to a halt, her boots sending up sparks, and looked up with a knee to the ground. Four spell casters in robes and cassocks stared down at her in stunned silence.

  Great. I have a feeling that “Berserk Healer” nickname is going to spread even further after this, Asuna thought ruefully as she pulled her rapier back.

  In a group battle, it was not actually the ability of the close-combat fighters at the front that mattered but the ability of the backup forces in the rear. After Asuna eliminated all of the healing ability of the enemy’s lead force, they didn’t stand a chance against the Sleeping Knights with Siune’s support.

  Two minutes and eight seconds had passed.

  She turned back to see Kirito and Klein, still locked in fierce battle with the reinforcements. The larger group was smaller than before, but the two men’s HP levels, as indicated by their color cursors, were near the red zone.

  Asuna felt a fresh wave of gratitude to the two men and the pixie on Kirito’s shoulder, who was acting as their strategic radar. She turned back to the Sleeping Knights, all of whom were still alive, and shouted, “It’s showtime! Let’s beat this boss!!”

  The other six responded in kind and hurtled forward. Asuna raced with all her speed for the dark, looming doors to the boss chamber.

  Just as in their first attempt, Jun used his free hand to pry the way open. Beyond the heavy double doors burned two pale fires.

  The slow tracing of the circle as the fires lit automatically was their grace period after opening the door, but the team had no need
to wait for it now. The party of seven plunged deeper into the chamber. Asuna, who was the last inside, turned to her right and hit a stone button on the wall. This canceled the minute of extra time they had, instantly shutting the chamber doors.

  The massive doors rumbled and began to close. Through the shrinking gap, they could see that the battle outside was entering its final phase.

  The swordsman in black raised his right hand over a bloodred HP bar. At last, it was the two fingers that signaled victory to Asuna.

  The boss chamber doors closed at last, shutting out all sound from the corridor. No one would be able to open them until the battle inside was finished.

  Amid a heavy silence, the only action was the growing of the signal fires every two seconds. The line of flames was not even halfway around the circular arena. They had a good fifty seconds left until the boss appeared.

  “Everyone, recover all your HP and MP with potions. Remember the strategy we discussed for the fight. The first few attacks are very simple, so stay calm and dodge them all,” Asuna instructed. The other six nodded and took out little red and blue bottles.

  When she realized they wanted to say something after recovering, Asuna looked at them expectantly. Yuuki took a step forward as the representative of the group and said, “Asuna…did those two men join in…to help us get through…?”

  “…Yes,” she replied, smiling. By now, Kirito and Klein would have lost their last HP and turned into little floating Remain Lights. In fact, knowing that nobody there would revive them, they probably just gave up and respawned at the save point.

  Asuna gave the Sleeping Knights a stern look, realizing that they were probably preoccupied with the fate of the two men who had sacrificed themselves for their sake.

  “Let’s make it up to them by reporting that we successfully defeated the boss.”

  “…But this entire time, we’ve only gotten anywhere thanks to you and your friends, Asuna,” Yuuki mumbled, biting her lip and hanging her head. Asuna patted her shoulders kindly. They had ten seconds until the boss. She needed to use that time to tell them something important.