"Waaaah!"
The scream grew farther and farther away as the adorable little girl, who looked no older than ten, vanished through the doorway.
Kain did not react to the scene. The girl before him had sent her own older sister flying simply because she did not want her interfering with this duel.
Calling Yui Strea's older sister was not wrong, either.
Both of them had been born from the same type of system. Yui was Unit One, and Strea was Unit Two. Naturally, that made Strea the younger sister.
The contrast between the sisters' bodies was rather interesting. The older sister had the body of a little girl, while the younger sister was closer to a mature young woman.
Judging from the current situation, Strea, as the younger sister, might really be "broken," just as Yui had said.
Kain glanced toward the upper right corner of his vision. There, he saw the letters HP and a constantly changing number.
That changing number was the number of players who had signed the contract.
In the end, once the signing period closed, the number stopped at 444.
It was such an oddly coincidental and malicious number.
And the instant the number locked in, the Valkyrie-like girl before him suddenly launched her greatsword into the sky.
When it reached its highest point, it seemed to pierce through the unsealed roof and into the clouds beyond before falling back down like a meteor.
Its speed was so great it came down like a bolt of lightning, striking the scar-covered body of the fallen world boss.
Among those many wounds, a few caught Kain's interest.
The next second, the colossal body began to glow, giving the impression that it was about to explode.
In the following instant, countless rays of light shot out in every direction.
All throughout the Ruby Palace, light pierced into the surroundings in every possible shape.
When the glow faded, the palace had become an armory.
Weapons of every kind were embedded everywhere—in the floor, in the stone pillars, in the walls.
This place had become a domain of blades.
There was no need for any countdown.
The battle began in the very next second.
Strea charged forward like a gale, and Kain casually grabbed a sword from nearby.
He did not move. He simply gripped the blade and met her attack as she closed the distance in the blink of an eye.
In an instant, sparks burst outward. The high-speed clash of metal echoed through the entire hall.
The collision between the two fighters was like two metal balls crashing together inside a bowl-shaped pit. After each impact, they rebounded away, rolled along the curve to a certain point, then rushed back toward the center and collided again.
And nearly every exchange involved them grabbing new weapons for the next clash.
Then, during another instant of collision—
Pffft!
The sound of flesh being pierced left Kain slightly stunned.
Strea had switched to another weapon from an angle he had not expected and landed a hit on him.
HP: 444 dropped by 1, becoming HP: 443.
Crack.
The weapon in his hand instantly turned into shards of light and disappeared. Its durability had been exhausted.
At the same time, Kain had already grabbed a new weapon a second earlier and swung it to meet her.
It was a heavy sword.
In his hands, the swing looked like a baseball player going for a home run.
Boom!
The air seemed to shudder.
The shield Strea raised to block him did not shatter, but the impact still sent her flying backward.
Kain did not immediately pursue. Instead, he pulled a dagger out of his shoulder.
Out of the corner of his eye, he checked his HP again.
HP: 435.
As for where the other points had been lost, he knew that perfectly well too.
In less than ten seconds of fighting, he had already burned through the equivalent of nine players' HP.
As for his opponent, Strea, he could see her HP as well.
HP: 442.
He had only managed to land two successful hits on her. The second had come just now when he sent her flying. At the same time, he had thrown the short blade stuck against the broad heavy sword, tearing open a wound across her throat.
When he looked over now, he saw the kind of injury that would be fatal in reality healing as if the scene had been rewound.
Ding, ding, ding!
A rapid series of metallic sounds rang out. Kain raised the broad greatsword he was using as a shield in front of himself, blocking the three shots from the arm-mounted weapon Strea had equipped at some point.
Before the arrows had even hit the floor, a violent gust was already crashing toward him.
Strea had used a stone pillar as a launch point and rebounded back at him. The rapier she had pulled from the pillar scraped violently along his broad greatsword as it drove straight toward his face.
But Kain twisted his greatsword, forcing the rapier off course.
The thrust that should have pierced straight through his forehead instead stabbed into his right eye and drove through it.
In that flash of lightning, Kain's own greatsword thrust forward and pierced Strea's abdomen.
Unfortunately, a wound like that could only be counted once.
He did not pull the greatsword out. He left it lodged there, because pinning her in place would hinder her movements to a degree and force her to pull it free herself.
The next second, Kain's expression changed slightly.
He bent backward at an angle that nearly folded his body ninety degrees. The rapier that had pierced through his right eye swept across his neck, almost cutting it halfway open.
If his reaction had been a millisecond slower, he would have been decapitated.
Although he avoided losing his head, the blade continued through and sliced off his shoulder, severing one of his arms.
The price Strea paid was the same.
One arm.
Because the direction in which she swung the rapier made her arm collide with the edge of Kain's greatsword.
With that much force behind the swing, she had effectively cut off her own arm.
In simple terms, they were trading wound for wound.
If Kain had been decapitated, he really would have lost on the spot.
Recovering from decapitation would be slow, and his control over his body would also suffer.
Strea would then pull the greatsword out first and launch a storm of attacks before he could recover. He doubted he would be able to defend himself. His HP might be cleared in an instant.
And this fighting style was truly familiar.
Combined with certain battle scars on the world boss—scars that could only have been left by a fighting style he recognized—Kain began to understand what had happened.
He had been fighting the endlessly spawning monsters on Floor 99.
Meanwhile, Strea had been on Floor 100, learning his combat abilities while using them in practice against the world boss.
On Floor 55—
"This is... bad."
Argo's expression was grave.
Since an official live broadcast was being provided, she did not need to risk her life as a battlefield reporter and get close to record it. She had used a teleport crystal to return here and watch with everyone else.
Because of their levels, their observation ability could not keep up with the two figures moving in what felt like a super-speed world. They were like two bolts of irregular lightning, constantly changing positions and colliding at high speed.
For those who could not clearly follow the battle, the only way to judge who had the upper hand was by watching the HP values decrease.
And from that perspective, Mr. Lance was clearly at a disadvantage. Roughly every time he lost three points, he only managed to take one from Strea.
At this rate, no matter how one looked at it, he was guaranteed to lose.
But because Argo possessed a very high-level insight skill, she could see the fight more clearly.
It was as if every one of Mr. Lance's attacks was being predicted by Strea. She seemed to have seen through all of his attack paths.
At first glance, it looked like Strea had unimaginable powers of observation and prediction. But from some of Strea's fighting methods, Argo had realized something else.
Now Argo understood the purpose of having endless bosses spawn on Floor 99 to attack Mr. Lance.
Strea was fighting him with his own fighting style.
An enemy who was extremely familiar with him and had mastered his combat methods was, in essence, another version of himself.
And normally, fighting oneself would end in a draw.
It was like chess. If the opponent copied every move exactly, that imitation alone would be enough to avoid defeat.
In that case, logically, both sides' HP should be dropping at a one-to-one ratio. It should not be three-to-one.
That left one other possibility.
The combat data loaded into Strea was probably not limited to Mr. Kain alone.
It was the data of every player in SAO.
That meant the enemy Mr. Lance was fighting was not only himself.
It also included every combat-type player in SAO.
Akihiko Kayaba, that bastard, had really designed an outrageously unfair opponent.
(End of Chapter)
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