Sleeping Knights.
It was a harmless enough name for Yuuki's guild. It lacked the grandeur of the Divine Dragon Alliance or the Knights of the Blood Oath, but there was no question that its members were strong. Satoru could see it in the smallest unconscious movements. Every one of them was completely at home inside a VR world.
With weapons in their hands, they could probably fight at something close to his own normal level.
They were already an elite party, so why did they need outside help? With skills like theirs, any professional farming guild would have been eager to recruit them.
Satoru considered the possibilities.
They were too experienced to need another fighter for an ordinary grind, whether the goal was Yrd, equipment, or skill proficiency. One extra player would make little difference at their level.
A rare item or player home seemed unlikely as well. Information had sold for enormous prices in old SAO, but ALO had countless fan sites publishing free guides. With enough patience and grinding, almost any item was within reach.
"Are you planning a war against another guild?" Satoru asked.
He would not have minded if they were. Most of his hardest battles had been duels, so he lacked experience in large-scale PvP, but chaos suited him. He could simply cut down whoever came within reach.
PvP itself was another matter. He knew that intimately. If someone told him to ambush a stranger in the wilderness, he would do it without hesitation. Once the other player was gone, the area became his hunting ground, and he could farm experience, Yrd, and items in peace.
He had done exactly that before.
The fact that drawing a weapon on another player still felt so normal to him said something deeply unhealthy about Satoru.
Yuuki stared at him, then shook her head.
"No. We're not going to war with anyone. You might laugh, but we want to defeat this Floor's boss."
"That is an entirely reasonable and honorable goal. Why would I laugh?"
Perhaps insulting Shadow Song had helped. In Yuuki's eyes, Satoru had gone from a shady professional farmer who bullied ordinary players to a noble warrior willing to defy authority in the name of freedom and justice. Her attitude toward him had clearly softened.
"Between the farming guilds and the other major guilds, space in Floor Boss raids is tight," Satoru said. "But no one refuses a genuinely strong player. Strength raises the clear rate. A raid can hold forty-nine people, so securing six or seven places should be easy enough."
Everyone across the table drew back slightly.
"That's not quite what we mean," Yuuki said. "We don't want to join a huge raid. The six of us want to defeat it with only you as our seventh member."
"Oh."
Satoru nodded, took another sip of tea, and waited for her to continue.
"Aren't you surprised?"
"Not particularly. The Floor Bosses in New Aincrad have been strengthened in all kinds of ridiculous ways compared to the old SAO versions. Their normal attacks and special abilities are powerful enough to feel unbalanced, but that doesn't make them impossible."
Everyone except Yuuki gave him a strange look.
"Exactly!"
Yuuki clapped her hands, delighted to find someone who understood.
"A single boss skill might wipe the whole party, and the bosses only get harder on higher Floors. Even full forty-nine-player raids get wiped all the time, but there's always a chance!"
Satoru nodded in approval.
"As long as you read the timing, evade the lethal skills, and bring enough consumables, one party defeating a Floor Boss is perfectly reasonable."
"Right! If it attacks, just dodge! Even a full-screen attack can be avoided if you fly high enough and pull off a few acrobatic turns."
"And you focus every strike on a weak point," Satoru added. "Most bosses aren't actually that durable. If it's huge, climb up its body and attack the head. If it's around your size, treat it like PvP."
He spoke from experience. He and Makoto Kaizuka had once crushed a miserable Floor Boss in the collateral damage of their own battle, and Satoru had already helped Souji and the others bring down the Magic Warrior. From his perspective, the plan sounded almost routine.
"You really do understand!"
The others watched in silence as Yuuki and Satoru enthusiastically validated each other's madness.
"Could the two of you show the Floor Bosses a little respect?" Jun asked. "They're not elite mobs."
"Of course they deserve respect," Satoru said calmly. "You only need enough to keep yourself from getting careless and making a stupid mistake."
"Have you challenged one before?" he asked.
"We tried the bosses on the Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Sixth Floors," Yuuki said.
"Not bad."
"We worked really hard, but our MP and consumables couldn't last. We had less room to maneuver as the battle went on, and eventually we wiped."
The "maneuvers" she meant probably involved using her wings to zigzag through the air at lightning speed, spinning hard enough to deflect incoming projectiles, driving a Sword Skill through the boss's heart, then pulling free and landing from a backflip without losing her balance.
Satoru pictured it.
Basic movement.
"But honestly, even getting one chance to enter the boss room is difficult," Yuuki said.
"Why?"
"Because of the farming guilds."
Satoru understood. Souji had asked for his help because every major faction was trying to lock down the Floor Boss and keep its rivals outside. Even the enormous professional guilds had been forced to plan a sudden, decisive clear before anyone could interfere.
A guild with only six members had no hope of being allowed through.
Individual skill meant little when the opposition could summon a hundred players with a single message.
"So that's why you hate them."
"Of course!"
Yuuki puffed out her cheeks.
"Now we need luck just to get the chance to try!"
"But we still haven't given up," Nori said with a shrug. "We knew we might need another member, so Yuuki set up that public challenge and waited for a strong player to appear. Apparently, she caused quite a commotion."
"Why insist on fighting alone?" Satoru asked. "Why not cooperate with another guild?"
He understood what they wanted to do, but joining forces would be far more efficient. Even at his strongest in old SAO, he had worked with the clearing group whenever possible because it saved time and effort.
"Well, that's..."
Yuuki's amethyst eyes widened.
She opened her mouth, but no words came. Something seemed to tighten in her chest. She tried again, then stopped, unable to find a way to explain.
Siune stepped in beside her.
"Let me."
Her voice remained calm.
"Samuro-san may already have realized that we didn't meet in this world. We found one another through an online community outside the game. We became friends almost immediately, and that was nearly two years ago."
Siune lowered her eyes as memories passed behind them.
"They are wonderful companions. Together, we've visited so many worlds and shared so many adventures. Unfortunately, we will probably only be able to travel together until this spring. Everyone has their own circumstances."
She paused before continuing.
"Before we go our separate ways, we wanted to create a memory none of us would ever forget. We decided to search through all the VRMMOs we could find for the happiest, most beautiful, most exciting world, then accomplish something there together. We moved from one world to another until we finally reached ALO."
Siune looked around the table. Jun, Tecchi, Talken, Nori, and Yuuki all smiled back and nodded.
"ALfheim and the floating castle Aincrad are incredible. The towns, forests, and grasslands are beautiful, and flying around the World Tree is something I'll never forget. There is only one thing left that we want to do."
Her blue eyes grew serious.
"We want to leave proof that we were here."
Siune explained that the Black Iron Palace in the Town of Beginnings now housed the Monument of Swordsmen. The names of players who defeated a Floor Boss were engraved there.
"It may only be for our own satisfaction, but we want our names on that monument more than anything. The problem is how the records work. If one party defeats the boss, every member is listed. If several parties participate, only their leaders are recorded."
"Because the monument has limited space," Satoru said, remembering the Black Iron Palace.
The Monument of Swordsmen was a physical object inside the virtual world. Aincrad had one hundred Floors, so there was no room to record every member of every successful raid. Each Floor allowed no more than seven names. A single party could have every member engraved, while a larger joint raid would record only each party leader.
"So if all six members of the Sleeping Knights want their names there, we have to challenge it as a single party," Siune said. "We came so close on the Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Sixth Floors, but we always fell just short. Since a party can have seven players, we decided to find someone at least as strong as Yuuki to fill the final place and improve our chances."
Everything finally made sense.
Satoru frowned slightly. Wanting a name on the Monument of Swordsmen was easy to understand. He had pursued more than enough achievement rewards himself. With the guild facing an approaching end, their wish carried even more weight.
"Will you help us?" Siune asked. "We only transferred here recently, so we may not be able to offer much as payment..."
She began opening a trade window, but Satoru stopped her.
"I didn't expect to be asked to carry two different parties on my first day here," he said with a tired smile. "Keep your money. You'll need it for equipment and supplies. Besides, I transferred here in a hurry from another game, and I don't even know how long I'll stay. Payment doesn't matter much to me."
"Aren't you one of the professional farmers?" Yuuki asked, catching the contradiction.
"Technically, I belong to a different division, one that handles another genre. They drafted me in because this team was short-handed."
Satoru cleared his throat.
"So you'll do it?" Siune asked.
Every face around the table lit up.
"Of course."
Satoru glanced at Yuuki, hiding the question that still troubled him.
"I'd be glad to help."
The guild would disband by spring.
He had planned to take his time investigating her.
If time was that short, he would have to find his answer in a single battle.
"Then let's give it everything we have."
Satoru opened his inventory and began materializing Healing Crystals onto the table. They had nearly filled his weight limit. Rare crystals poured out with a series of hard clatters until a glittering mound stood before the group, bathing their stunned faces in shifting colors.
"Thirty-six percentage-based Healing Crystals," Satoru said casually. "We can use them during the fight, but selling some and upgrading everyone's equipment would probably be more efficient."
Tecchi and Jun stared with their mouths open.
"These are all percentage-based?"
"One of them is worth more than ten thousand Yrd!"
"This pile is worth almost four hundred thousand!"
Their eyes began to shine.
Healing Crystals came in two forms. Fixed-value crystals restored a set amount of HP, while percentage-based crystals restored a portion of the user's maximum HP. The latter only became more valuable as the game progressed, since their effectiveness never fell behind a player's growing HP.
A crystal that instantly restored eighty percent of a player's health was practically an extra life.
That was one reason Satoru, Souji, and the others had managed to defeat the Magic Warrior with only four people. They had fought with weapons in one hand and money in the other, effectively beating the Floor Boss to death with their wallets.
"Use these for the raid."
His generosity drew a cheer from the table. Yuuki seized both of his hands and squeezed them tightly.
"So you really are a good guy!"
"At the very least, I'm not a bad one."
Satoru smiled as the last of her suspicion vanished.