The two figures had entered a world of super-speed, flashing and colliding like two bolts of lightning.
Whenever they streaked across the floor, every violent burst of sparks left another wound behind. What had once been a fairly level surface was now scraped into a ruined mess.
When they swept past another stone pillar, cold flashes of steel erupted in rapid succession, and the pillar collapsed with a thunderous crash.
It was as if those two streaks of lightning had wrapped around it for only a few short seconds, piercing it with electric current or slicing it with countless wounds until it finally crumbled.
Their collision continued along a wall, racing upward toward the roof of the Ruby Palace until they finally landed on the great chandelier hanging over the hall.
Their attacks made the chandelier shriek and groan.
The chains suspending it were caught in the aftermath of their strikes, snapping one after another.
At the same time, the crystal ornaments on the chandelier shattered under impacts like explosions, sending countless crystal fragments raining down.
At last, with a tremendous crash, the enormous crystal chandelier—at least twenty meters across—lost its support completely and plummeted toward the ground.
And the two fighters on top of it did not break away until the very instant the chandelier struck the floor.
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
A sound like the earth itself groaning echoed through the entire Ruby Palace, through all of Floor 100.
For a moment, the two seemed to vanish into the impact.
At that instant, everyone's faces changed. Many went deathly pale.
They could not see the two fighters through the cloud of dust, but the HP values could be observed directly.
The HP value representing the players' side was dropping at a terrifying speed.
In the span of a single breath, it plunged by more than fifty points—and it was still falling.
That one blow dragged the HP value straight down from three digits to two.
As for the final boss, its HP also dropped sharply, but it only lost a little over ten points before stopping.
The change hurled the players, who had just begun to feel the faintest trace of hope, straight into the abyss.
Before this, the damage ratio had barely been pulled back to one-to-one, though the two sides' remaining HP had still been separated by a gap of over one hundred versus over three hundred.
Even so, if the fight continued, there might still have been a chance to overtake her.
No one had expected such a sudden reversal. In an instant, the players' representative had been reduced to just over fifty points, while the enemy still had more than three hundred.
No matter how they looked at it, there was no hope.
And the ones who fell deepest into despair were not necessarily the 444 players who had signed the contract.
If the fight ended in defeat, those players would have their lives taken. The players who had not participated, however, would merely remain trapped in this world. They could still wait. The rescue efforts outside surely had not stopped.
They still had hope of surviving until they returned to reality.
"What are you doing?!"
"What am I doing? This is all her fault! If it weren't for her, I never would've signed that death document!"
The furious shout left everyone nearby silent.
The target of that rage—Asuna—had no words to answer the twisted face and bloodshot, furious eyes staring at her.
"Did anyone force you to sign?"
"If she hadn't said there was a chance to clear the game, would I have signed?!"
"Enough. Shut up."
The voice belonged to the leader of the Army guild, a guild master whose prestige was second only to that of the Knights of the Blood's commander. His authoritative tone seemed to slightly shock the player on the verge of breaking down.
"But in the end, it's still her—"
Someone still could not hold back and tried to say more.
"Shut up. We've already won!"
Argo's cold voice cut off whoever was still trying to argue.
Her gaze did not turn toward anyone. She was still staring at the live broadcast.
And on her face was an expression that did not match her icy voice at all.
A delighted smile.
On the screen, a massive reversal had appeared. As the smoke and dust dispersed, the first figure to emerge was the man Asuna called Mr. Kain.
Honestly, at that moment, Argo's heart had sunk completely.
Several weapons were embedded in Mr. Kain's body, along with far more crystal fragments.
That was the damage that had caused his HP to plummet by over a hundred points.
But when the dust cleared further, she finally noticed the situation beneath him.
There lay a body with its head severed.
The head and torso were separated by more than thirty centimeters. The head, in particular, had been firmly pinned to the ground by sheet after sheet of crystal shards.
Between the head and body, in that thirty-centimeter gap, an axe had been driven into the floor.
Mr. Kain himself was pinning down the body. His feet were planted on Strea's, and two weapons had pierced through his own feet, then through Strea's legs, nailing them together into the ground.
As for Strea's hands, because she had lost her head and could no longer clearly see her own situation, they were flailing blindly. Mr. Kain used crystal shards in his hands to pierce them through and drive them into the floor as well.
At this point, the outcome could already be called a guaranteed victory.
In the next instant, giving the final boss no chance to resist, he grabbed a sharp fragment beside him and launched an attack on the girl's limbs that made even Argo's scalp prickle.
Wound after wound opened across the girl's body. Before one could heal, a new one fell, or the original injury widened.
In the blink of an eye, there was almost no part of the girl left intact.
And the HP value representing her was now falling in a straight line.
Below two hundred.
Below one hundred fifty.
Below one hundred.
Below fifty.
Below ten.
In the next instant, the number dropped so fast it was as if everything between 10 and 0 had been skipped.
It hit 0.
Kain's attack stopped at the same moment.
For that instant, the world seemed to freeze.
[Beginning now, the trade functions and monster-killing functions of the 444 players participating in this event will be terminated... Your maximum life values will be fixed.]
A sudden voice rang beside Argo's ear.
No.
Correction.
It rang in the ears of all 444 participating players, leaving them stunned.
Then one by one, they looked up and saw a system announcement they had not seen in more than a year.
[Aincrad Standard Time, December 24, 13:55. The 444 players participating in this event have achieved victory. You are judged to have successfully cleared the game.]
The system notification sounded again, and every player froze in place for several seconds.
[As a reward for this event, the [Log Out] option will activate in ten seconds.]
This announcement made the stunned players' faces fill with excitement.
Most of them could not even wait the ten seconds. They immediately raised the index and middle fingers of their right hands straight up, then swung them straight downward.
It was the gesture used to call up the game's [Main Menu Window].
"Th-there's no log out button!"
"Idiot, it said ten seconds! Does ten seconds pass that fast for you?"
"Ahaha, I got too excited."
They were excited, but unease still mingled with it.
They were afraid that, when those ten seconds ended, the log out button would not appear at all.
And when the ten seconds everyone was silently counting in their hearts finally reached zero—
"It... it appeared!"
The voice, so emotional it was nearly crying, instantly spread to every player who had taken part in this special event and gambled their lives on it.
In their vision, the log out button that had vanished for more than a year appeared once again, shining with a faint glow.
It was the key to escaping this virtual prison.
(End of Chapter)
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