The Fifty-Fifth Floor was the floor the clearing group had currently reached.
Because the Fifty-Fourth Floor boss had only just been defeated, the players who entered this new floor were still moving with extreme caution.
After all, a completely new map had just opened. Forget the boss—no one even knew what the ordinary field monsters were like yet. They needed to understand their attack patterns first.
Otherwise, if they charged in recklessly, they might get killed by wild monsters before they even saw the boss.
At the stairway connecting the Fifty-Fifth Floor to the floor below, quite a few players had gathered.
They were all staring at the door that had still been open yesterday, but was now closed again because the boss had respawned.
According to the information they had, that special NPC had already reached the lower floor.
Less than twenty-four hours had passed since he first appeared.
"That NPC is basically set to be invincible, right?"
"If he didn't have to climb between floors, and you added up the actual time he spent killing all those floor bosses, would it even come to an hour?"
"It should, right? On the Forty-Second Floor...!"
"That one doesn't count. To even attack that boss, you had to deal with a separate mechanic first."
Some floor bosses were disgusting like that. At the start, players could not attack them at all, while the boss itself had ways to harass and damage the players. They had to destroy certain altars or other mechanisms first before they could face it directly.
So that kind of process time did not really count as part of the actual duel.
"How many seconds do you think the boss downstairs can last?"
"Seconds? Isn't that a little exaggerated?"
"It's not exaggerated. The Fifty-Third Floor boss died like that, and the Fifty-Fourth Floor boss was actually easier than the Fifty-Third."
Soon, people started placing bets.
"Everyone decided? Then—"
The voice of the dealer running the betting pool cut off abruptly, because the door was opening.
The floor had been cleared.
How much time had it taken?
That thought had only just surfaced when everyone froze.
Two figures walked out.
One of them was Asuna, vice commander of the Knights of the Blood. She was a publicly recognized beauty, a dream goddess to countless inexperienced young men.
In truth, even some older adult players had been captivated by her beauty, and a few had even tried to court her.
But everyone's attention immediately shifted to the person beside her.
Aside from the red cursor above his head and the name Asuna had given them at the start, there was no information on him at all.
When they threw appraisal skills at him, they had no effect. It was as if the identification had failed.
"Mr. Lance, I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with the floors after this."
Asuna spoke apologetically to the person beside her.
From here on, the road to the Hundredth Floor could only be challenged by Mr. Kain alone.
She wanted to keep following him, but the problem was that she lacked the strength. She would only be a burden.
Fortunately, Yui would still be with him. The child could return at any time and tell Asuna what was happening.
"No need to apologize. You've already done very well."
In the original plot, Kain remembered that the Fifty-Fifth Floor had roughly been cleared around February or March of 2024.
The current date was December 23, 2024. For Asuna to have helped the clearing group reach the Fifty-Fifth Floor this far ahead of schedule meant she had already played a major role.
It was not enough to say that she had only managed it because Black Cat gave her information.
That information was only from the novel and anime. In reality, there was not that much it could help with.
The novel and anime had never written out the exact boss data for every single floor, let alone everything that happened between those floors.
Of course, there were records about a few particular floor bosses—the ones that caused heavy casualties—but even that information was limited.
Thanks to Asuna's repeated warnings and their extensive preparations, those floors had not led to the large-scale casualties among the clearing group that had occurred in the original plot.
Heavy losses among the clearing group often caused huge changes to future progress.
If too many high-level players died, they would need a great deal of time to form another group of players strong enough to continue the assault.
On top of that, excessive sacrifices would damage morale and make some people quit out of fear.
In short, Asuna had already done more than enough.
After that, Kain asked where the commander of the Knights of the Blood was.
As expected, he was not there.
So Kayaba really intended to make him fight his way up one floor at a time?
Honestly, after grinding his way to this floor, Kain had little interest in the floors that followed.
Rushing through the already-cleared floors and killing the bosses at the fastest possible speed had actually been fairly entertaining. It was like a speedrun, with spectators watching from the sidelines.
The floors ahead would not be like that. It would feel as if he were playing a single-player game by himself, which was a little boring.
After seeing the strength he had displayed, would it not be simpler to just let him reach the higher floors directly? What was the point of making him climb one floor at a time?
A short while later—
Boom!
A kick that shook the air itself struck a white dragon, reducing it to fragments amid a dying shriek.
Kain had begun advancing toward the highest point on the floor. From where he stood, he could clearly see the staircase there, which meant the floor's gatekeeper boss was in that direction.
As he approached, large numbers of white dragons attacked him.
These flying monsters were rather good at wasting his time.
"Roar!"
With a thunderous bellow, a breath of ice swept down.
Crack, crack, crack!
Frost spread rapidly, and Kain allowed himself to be frozen.
Once the freezing effect ended, a white dragon that had been hovering in the air dove down like a hunting eagle. Its claws sliced sharply toward him.
Splat!
The ice shattered.
But the dragon claws that should have pierced Kain's body instead gouged into the frozen surface of the lake beneath him.
Immediately after, the white dragon screamed.
It should have taken off again, but one of its wings had been torn apart, sending it crashing heavily across the ground.
At the instant the ice shattered, Kain had dodged the claws at a speed even faster than the dragon's attack. At the same time, he had driven a claw into its wing and ripped it apart by force.
As for that claw, he had taken it directly from a material drop after killing another dragon.
Ten minutes later, inside the boss room, a monster was rampaging wildly.
It crashed around in a frenzy, smashing the surroundings into ruin. It looked as though it might nearly bring the entire room down.
At last, following one final scream, it collapsed with a thunderous crash.
As its body shattered into countless motes of light and vanished, Kain's figure appeared within the scattering glow.
This monster had been unexpectedly easy to deal with.
He had simply let it eat him, then destroyed it from the inside.
With that, the total time spent entering and clearing the Fifty-Fifth Floor was twenty-three minutes.
Kain followed the stairs to the end and pushed open the door before him.
What entered his field of vision was—
"Oh? Now this is interesting."
The hellish monster-filled scene before him was absolutely not something that should have appeared on the Fifty-Sixth Floor.
This was clearly a boss floor specially prepared for him.
...
Granzam, the city on the Fifty-Fifth Floor.
In the plaza, a large crowd had gathered near the five-meter-tall metal gate.
"It appeared! The teleport option for the Fifty-Sixth Floor appeared!"
As that excited cry rang out, the plaza fell briefly silent.
Then it erupted into noisy commotion.
Among the crowd, Asuna finally relaxed the slight tension in her heart.
The appearance of the option to teleport to the next floor meant that the Fifty-Fifth Floor boss had been defeated.
However, they could not teleport up yet.
They still had to wait for the teleport gate on the upper floor to be activated before they could go there.
Ten minutes passed, but it still was not activated.
Twenty minutes passed, and it still was not activated.
Thirty minutes passed, and there was still no activation.
Asuna began to feel that something was wrong.
Mr. Kain had told her that after going up, he would help activate the teleport gate.
If it had not activated, did that mean he could not activate it?
Activating a teleport gate was very simple. A player who had reached that floor only needed to touch it.
Could it be that the system did not recognize Mr. Kain as a player, so it would not activate for him?
Still, it was fine.
Even if no one touched it, under normal circumstances, it would automatically activate two hours after the boss was defeated.
(End of Chapter)
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