"Yuuki, Jun, and Tecchi are the front line. Talken and Nori handle midrange, and Siune supports from the rear. Is that right?"
Satoru looked over the Sleeping Knights, now fully equipped for battle. They had worn ordinary light clothing when they introduced themselves the day before, but today, every one of them had changed into Ancient-tier gear.
Yuuki wore the same black half-armor and carried the same narrow longsword as when they first met. Jun's short frame was swallowed by copper-red plate armor, and a greatsword nearly as tall as he was hung across his back. The enormous Tecchi wore heavy plate as well, with a shield the size of a door and a mace for a weapon.
The bespectacled Talken wore light brass armor over his lanky frame and carried an absurdly long spear. Beside him, the more mature-looking Nori had pieced together comfortable armor from several different metals and wielded an equally absurd iron staff.
Siune was the only one who looked like a dedicated mage. Her white and deep-navy robes resembled a cleric's vestments, and a round cap like the top of a cream cake rested on her head. A silver staff hung from her right hand.
Overall, it was a well-balanced party. At the very least, it was far more stable than the four-DPS lineup Satoru had used against the Magic Warrior.
The one obvious weakness was limited healing and support. Then again, that four-DPS party had solved the same problem by stuffing their inventories to the weight limit with Healing Crystals.
"Another backliner might help," Satoru admitted without shame, "but I can't cast spells."
He could not even pronounce the incantations, let alone cast them.
"That's fine. A swordsman that strong has no reason to hang around in the rear," Yuuki said with an approving nod. "Just get in there and hit the boss as hard as you can."
Honestly, the girl's approach to games suited him perfectly.
Healing? Support? Sorry. Satoru understood critical hits, armor breaks, and combos that did not stop until the enemy died.
Tactical equipment? He understood one thing: buy the biggest sniper rifle available and rush B.
Playing the edge and healing through the zone? He would rather hot-drop the military base, take over the school, and send a few cheaters back to the lobby.
Satoru rarely touched horror games, partly because they did nothing for him and partly because their protagonists were always too helpless. Every encounter became another excuse to hide or run away. Why not give the protagonist a hammer or a shovel and let him fight the ghost? Where was the fun in cowering all night?
He called it courage.
Everyone who had played against him called it being terminally hardheaded.
Since very few players could actually beat him head-on, however, even that had become a compliment. It meant he had the strength to justify his arrogance.
Yuuki saw games much the same way, and that common ground had already made the two of them considerably closer.
Their shared strategy could be summarized in one sentence.
"Jun, Tecchi, you two go up front and get pounded. We'll keep unloading on the boss, and we'll pay back every hit you take."
Perhaps this was what terminal DPS syndrome looked like.
Both of them were beyond saving.
"R-right. Leave the getting pounded part to us..."
Jun and Tecchi could only nod.
Wednesday, January 8, 2026.
It was the last day of winter break, but such distinctions had stopped mattering to a man whom children already called "mister" whenever he went outside. At one in the afternoon, Satoru arrived at the inn in Ronbaru on the Twenty-Seventh Floor, just as promised. He had already told Shino that he would be spending some time in ALO.
Normally, no one should have reached the Floor Boss labyrinth this quickly.
Satoru, however, had contacted Souji and asked him to send scouts into the labyrinth ahead of them.
Shadow Song, the demon hunter, and Yurnero, the Sword Saint, had always complemented each other. One commanded the battlefield while the other tore open enemy lines. Their partnership had survived too many games for Souji to take their previous conversation seriously. He had even asked, with genuine concern, whether Satoru's account had been hacked.
Satoru replied that it had.
His equipment was gone too.
The Salamander commander did not care about such a minor inconvenience. He immediately mailed over a set of high-end gear, far beyond anything that could be called standard issue.
Then the two of them plotted to seize the route between floors before their rivals could.
Dozens of elite Salamander scouting parties had cleared the entire labyrinth zone overnight. On their map, a thin route now cut through the sea of black fog, faint but unmistakable, like a single lighthouse in a dark ocean.
Souji agreed that defeating the Floor Boss first and claiming the surrounding resources afterward was a sound plan. More importantly, the suggestion had come from his old partner. Seeing signs that Yurnero might truly return had thrilled him. He gave the order without a second thought, then sent Satoru the completed map early the next morning.
What Souji did not know was that, by that afternoon, his trusted Sword Saint had already turned traitor and was leading another group to steal the Floor Boss using the very map Souji had handed him.
In short, Souji had been sold out again.
This time, at bargain-bin prices.
The Salamander commander was still asleep, recovering from the previous night's work. In his dreams, his sworn comrade made a triumphant return, and together they resumed their old conquest of game after game. The thought moved him enough to bring tears to his eyes.
What would happen once he woke up, learned the truth, and came charging after his friend with murder in his eyes was another matter.
Satoru had no such worries. Selling out a friend came as naturally to him as drinking water. It was enough to make anyone wonder what kind of relationship the members of their old professional guild had shared. Perhaps betraying and being betrayed was simply how they expressed friendship.
Satoru possessed something none of the Sleeping Knights had: years of irreplaceable experience. Even so, New Aincrad had changed enough that he wanted their first attempt to be a test run.
"Let's go take a look at the route between floors."
They left the inn together and rose into the eternal night sky. As expected of the Sleeping Knights, all six flew freely without auxiliary controllers. Their movement was so smooth that no one would have guessed they had only recently transferred into ALO. They were not merely experienced with VRMMOs; they had an exceptional affinity for FullDive technology itself.
Satoru had met only a handful of players like them.
Gathering six in one place was remarkable. Whoever had brought the guild together must have been an interesting person. Satoru might have expected deeply invested players who had poured their entire lives into games. He had once been one himself.
Yet the Sleeping Knights showed none of the stubborn pride or professional stiffness that such players often carried.
They simply looked happy to be playing.
"There it is! The labyrinth!"
Beyond a range of stone mountains stood an enormous cylindrical tower that stretched from the ground to the underside of the floor above. Hexagonal crystal pillars the size of small houses jutted from its base, bathing the darkness in a hazy blue-green glow.
"So the map Samuro-san gave us was real."
"Clearing the entire labyrinth route in one night... Only a professional guild's best players could do that. And Samuro still managed to pry a map this valuable out of them. That's impressive..."
Satoru accepted the praise with dignified restraint. Opposing power leveling and professional farming guilds was practically a moral duty. Making them bleed for once on behalf of ordinary players was only right.
There were no monsters or other parties near the entrance.
Naturally.
The six Sleeping Knights landed on the blue-black ground and looked up. From this close, the tower's imposing height was nothing like the distant view from the sky.
"We agreed to avoid ordinary monsters whenever possible. Let's move."
At Satoru's signal, Yuuki and the others settled into focus and drew their weapons with a chorus of bright metallic sounds.
Siune, an Undine skilled in magic, raised her silver staff and cast several support buffs in succession. Light wrapped around every member of the party. Nori followed with a night-vision spell. Once their preparations were complete, they exchanged nods, and Yuuki took the lead into the labyrinth.
Satoru had deliberately put her in front.
He wanted to observe her, and that alone was worth selling Souji out.
...
"Aaaah! We lost! We actually lost!"
Nori, the last to return, thumped Talken cheerfully on the back. All seven of them, Satoru included, had reappeared around the save crystal in Ronbaru's central square after being thoroughly wiped out by the Twenty-Seventh Floor's Black Giant.
"We tried so hard, too..."
Yuuki's shoulders sagged.
Satoru smiled.
"It's fine. The first run was only a test. We didn't use any crystals and relied entirely on Siune's healing. Next time, we'll fight seriously."
He had given the battle his full effort, but only within ordinary limits. He had not tapped into his Fluctlight, used any unique skills, or brought the top-tier equipment he had wielded against the Magic Warrior. Naturally, he had died with the rest of the party.
More importantly, he had spent much of the fight watching Yuuki.
He needed to confirm his suspicions one more time.
Yuuki, however, seemed perfectly normal.
"The boss is a giant with several arms. Compared with an irregular beast-type enemy, most of its attacks come straight from the front. Its basic patterns are a hammer slam, a horizontal chain sweep, and a headlong charge. At half HP, it enters Phase Two and gains a wide-area breath attack. Once its HP reaches the red zone, Phase Three adds an eight-hit AoE combo with all four weapons."
Satoru pushed his other thoughts aside and returned to the professional habits that had served him for years. He opened a holographic window and sketched each attack pattern with his fingertips as he explained the countermeasures.
"Jun and Tecchi can ignore the chain for the most part and focus on the hammer. That's where the opening is. If you let the hammer miss instead of blocking it with a weapon or shield, it hits the floor and leaves the boss stuck for about 0.7 seconds. Nori and Talken should use their strongest attacks during that window. Its back has several blind spots, so Yuuki can stay behind it and keep using charge skills. Just watch the chain, because the sweep can reach directly behind it. As for the breath attack..."
Without notes or even a sheet of paper, Satoru dissected the Black Giant piece by piece. The six Sleeping Knights listened with serious expressions and nodded along.
"They're both the same type of player," someone murmured, "but Samuro thinks through a fight a lot more than Yuuki does..."
Of course he did.
Satoru was hardheaded, calculating, and perfectly willing to fight dirty.
Within four minutes, he had made the Black Giant sound no more threatening than an ordinary orc.
"We can beat that Floor Boss," Satoru said, looking around the group. "I fought here a long time ago. You have my word."
Yuuki answered with her usual innocent smile.
"I'm glad we asked Samuro-san to help us."
You wanted to kick me out yesterday...
Then again, the speed at which her feelings changed suggested she really was quite young. There was something childishly mischievous in the way she acted.
"Save the rest for the victory party. This time, we fight seriously."
Satoru glanced at Yuuki and sharpened his tone.
...
They flew out of Ronbaru once more. Now that they knew the route, the return trip was even faster. Whenever monsters appeared, an illusion spell diverted their aggro before the party could lose a second.
They reached the tower in five minutes, rushed through the entrance without slowing, and let Yuuki break through the monsters filling the narrow passages. The respawned field bosses fell almost immediately. Before long, they were back in the broad corridor between floors, with the boss chamber doors finally in sight.
Then Satoru raised an eyebrow.
Yuuki and Jun skidded to a halt beside him, their boots scraping against the floor.
"W-what is this?"
Nori stared ahead.
Twenty or thirty players packed the last thirty meters of the corridor. Their races varied, and white, blue, and brown armor mingled throughout the crowd. Despite their numbers, almost no one spoke. They simply stood guard before the doors in tense silence.
Moon Scythe and Fallen Faith.
Satoru recognized the white and blue groups from Souji's description. They were Miara's constant rivals. The players in brown must have belonged to a third faction.
The news had traveled quickly, but not impossibly so. Miara's scouting parties had been far too conspicuous the night before. The groups gathered here had come to keep one another in check, not to challenge the boss.
Satoru patted Yuuki on the shoulder when he saw her bite her lip.
"It's fine. Ignore them."
"...Really?"
Satoru walked casually toward the crowd. Every player turned to watch him. There was no surprise or tension in their expressions, only the stern focus of guards at their posts.
He approached the nearest player wearing high-end equipment.
"Hey. We want to fight the boss. Let us through."
The man's frown deepened. They were obviously blocking their rivals, but openly bullying ordinary players would create problems: forum outrage, complaints to the operators, and damage to their guild's reputation. Public drama was always the worst part.
Most ordinary players would have taken one look at such a large force and walked away. The man clearly had not expected anyone to ask.
"Our guild is preparing for a run. Please wait."
One of the white-uniformed Moon Scythe players shot him a cold look.
"How long?" Satoru asked.
"An hour."
"We're not waiting an hour. If you're not going in within ten minutes, we are."
The Fallen Faith player hesitated, then passed the problem to the group beside him.
"Fine by me. Ask them. Moon Scythe isn't with us."
The Moon Scythe captain scratched his head, already tired of the conversation. At last, he abandoned any attempt at compromise.
"Sorry, but a guild war could break out here at any moment. This isn't a good time to fight the boss. Come back another day. We aren't stealing your target. It's only a warning."
"You haven't started fighting yet. Why don't we go in first?"
The captain's gaze hardened.
"If you try to enter, the fighting starts."
The Fallen Faith captain immediately caught on and patted the sword at his waist.
"That's right. The moment you go in, we fight. If your party gets caught in the middle, don't blame us."
What a nuisance.
Satoru rubbed the side of his head.
Yuuki stepped forward with her usual smile and asked brightly, "So no matter what we say, you aren't moving away from that door?"
"Unfortunately, no."
The two captains exchanged a glance and reached an agreement.
"I see. Then we have no choice."
Yuuki laughed softly.
"Let's fight."
"Let's fight."
She and Satoru spoke at almost exactly the same time.
Both captains stared at them. ALO allowed players to attack one another freely in neutral territory, so disputes were often settled by the sword. Even so, picking a fight with a major professional guild meant risking retaliation afterward.
Retaliation was not the real problem. Professional guilds would hardly waste resources over a small grudge. The question was whether seven players could defeat more than thirty well-equipped veterans.
"Are you serious?" the captains asked.
"Completely."
Satoru's katana was already moving. Its hum cut through the air and nearly swallowed his reply as he struck at the Moon Scythe captain. The man showed a moment of surprise but no panic. He stepped back, drew his highly upgraded straight sword, and met the attack.
Steel crashed against steel. The Moon Scythe captain's skill and experience were far beyond those of an ordinary player.
A few seconds later, he screamed as Satoru sent him flying.
He hit the floor several meters away with his HP already in the red. His eyes widened, as if he could not believe how quickly he had lost.
Another player came hurtling through the air and crashed beside him. It was the Fallen Faith captain who had backed him up moments earlier.
Satoru and Yuuki flicked their katana and black sword in perfect unison, as though shaking nonexistent blood from the blades.
"Don't hold back," the two captains ordered as they pushed themselves off the floor.
Only then did the surrounding professionals shift into combat mode. Their frontliners spread through the corridor and drew their weapons one after another with parade-ground precision. Without an order, they would have stood still even if their captains had died in front of them.
The discipline of a large professional guild was almost military. Their formation left no obvious weakness, and a quick victory was no longer possible.
Jun, Siune, Tecchi, Nori, and Talken came forward to stand beside Satoru and Yuuki.
Three times their number advanced in perfect unison, tightening the encirclement. Shields pressed in from every side to deny them room, while Sword Skills stabbed through the gaps. No further commands were needed.
I wanted to see what she could really do...
Satoru glanced at Yuuki and sighed.
None of that would matter if the party was wiped out here.
Then countless footsteps approached from behind, shattering the murderous silence.
A mass of colored cursors appeared at the far end of the corridor, advancing in orderly ranks. The front group wore the same white as Moon Scythe's first detachment. The blue-armored members of Fallen Faith followed right behind them despite their hostility toward one another.
Until the fighting began, they could march together like one guild.
Once it did, neither side would show mercy.
Surrounded front and rear by nearly seven times their number, Satoru covered his face with one hand.
How long would he have to play one-man army to cut through all of them? Escaping might have been possible, but they had come to fight the boss. Unless they eliminated every last player, there was no chance of entering the chamber in peace.
Worse, how many of the Sleeping Knights would survive the battle?
Satoru could hardly go in alone.
"I've been away from professional guilds too long. My instincts are getting dull."
He had underestimated both their speed and the attention they paid to one another.
The barrage of spells and items from behind would be enough to take down several members of his party. His personal strength no longer mattered. Their objective had become impossible.
Satoru did hold grudges, though.
He studied the captains' faces and smiled coldly. Even if an army stood in his way, he intended to break through long enough to give each of them a full serving of death penalties.
"Sorry," he said. "It looks like we won't get our chance on this floor. Maybe if I'd swallowed my pride earlier, we could have found another way."
"It's fine. We DPS players never compromise."
Yuuki was still smiling brightly.
"You promised to pay back every hit we took," Jun and Tecchi said with perfect seriousness. "Time to keep that promise. At this rate, I think these people owe me about five full health bars. Do something about it."
Nori and Siune exchanged a look and pressed hands to their foreheads.
"So... no buffs or healing this time?"
"DPS players. Honestly..."
They traded a few more jokes, then tightened their grips on their weapons.
At this point, all they could do was fight until they fell.
The Moon Scythe and Fallen Faith captains saw them prepare and gave the order.
"Take them out."
But before anyone moved, a furious roar tore through the corridor.
"SATORU, YOU BACKSTABBING BASTARD! I JUST GOT A CALL! YOU SOLD ME OUT!"
The voice carried all the outrage of a man betrayed by someone he trusted completely. He was so furious that he did not even call Satoru by his avatar name. He used his real one.
Even the professional fighters froze beneath the force of that scream.
Then came the thunder of marching feet. The sound swelled until it resembled a cavalry charge, even though Satoru knew ALO did not allow mounts inside labyrinth zones. The floor itself seemed to tremble beneath an approaching army.
Shadow Song, commander of the Salamanders.
He really had brought an army to kill one man.
Flame-red armor and burning Salamander hair flooded the corridor like a tide of lava. Beside that force, the Moon Scythe and Fallen Faith reinforcements suddenly looked insignificant. Countless emblems shaped like withered leaves gleamed across the army: the mark of Miara.
The two rival captains went pale.
"The Burning Legion?! Isn't that Miara's race-war strike force? And Shadow Song is commanding them himself?"
"Are they trying to start the race war now? It isn't for another month!"
They would never guess that this entire force had come for a single person.
The brilliance of heavily upgraded equipment covered the corridor in starlight. It was an army whose presence alone seemed capable of drowning a world boss. When its ranks moved, they looked like the fires of hell sweeping across the ground.
Satoru brightened.
There was not a trace of concern on his face about the man who wanted to tear him apart.
"Souji! Save me!"
For once, Satoru discarded every shred of dignity and shouted for help.
"Huh?"
The plea stopped Souji short.
After years of fighting at Satoru's side, when had he ever heard the mighty Sword Saint ask anyone to save him?
His instincts warned him that this was a trap. Then he looked past the crowd and saw Satoru with several unfamiliar players, trapped between the forces of Moon Scythe and Fallen Faith.
It was plainly an attempted encirclement.
Had Satoru noticed the rival guilds moving and brought a few friends to secure the route while Souji slept, only to get dragged into a fight?
But then why had Ichiro Narita shaken him awake, laughing that Satoru had sold him out without his even noticing?
Someone had definitely betrayed him.
Souji simply had not worked out who.
For the moment, the scene before him took priority.
"Shadow Song!" the Moon Scythe captain shouted across Satoru's party. "What is the meaning of this? Are you trying to start the race war early?"
"Who are you?"
"Gedos."
"Never heard of you. I know your boss, your guild leader, your deputy leader, and a few commanders I've beaten half to death. That's about it."
Gedos faltered.
"None of that matters. What exactly are you doing here?"
Souji glanced at the captain's red HP bar, then at Satoru's almost untouched green one.
"Did you attack my friend?!"
"What?"
"You took thirteen whole HP off him! What the hell do you think you're doing?"
The Moon Scythe players stared at him.
"What are you talking about?"
"So this is a provocation!"
Souji ignored the question, finished his performance, and waved one hand.
"Everyone, drive Moon Scythe and Fallen Faith back to their save points."
His lieutenant stared at him.
"Boss, that may be the dumbest excuse for a war I've ever heard."
Satoru promptly stabbed himself. His HP dropped by a visible chunk.
"Ow! They're killing me!" he shouted with tremendous energy.
The real message was obvious: hurry up and kill them all, and do not hesitate for even a second.
The lieutenant covered his face. He had been with the guild long enough to know Satoru too.
"That excuse was even worse..."
"It's enough," Souji said. "Our boss may be a hopeless chuuni, but loyalty means everything to him. Later, I'll tell Mortimer that the mighty Sword Saint stood alone to defend our interests, only to be surrounded by evil enemies. Even as they overwhelmed him, he refused to yield and cried, 'Long live Mortimer!' At the last moment, the bonds between comrades guided me here with reinforcements. Mortimer will cry, applaud, call it an epic, and never ask why we started a guild war."
"So the answer is still that he's a chuuni."
The lieutenant buried his face even deeper in his hand.
Souji cleared his throat.
"Crush Moon Scythe and Fallen Faith!"
The silent inferno erupted. A red tide slammed into the blue and white formations, and more than a dozen Remain Lights appeared almost instantly.
"Damn it, Shadow Song! You're starting a war!"
Gedos shouted, pointing at him from across the corridor.
"Oh no. They're killing me," Satoru said in a perfectly flat voice before erasing the rest of Gedos's HP with one slash.
"Oh no. They're killing me."
Another invisible slash took out the Fallen Faith captain before he could introduce himself.
Not that anyone had bothered to give him a name.
Satoru smashed straight through the twenty-player formation ahead. A pale-gold light flashed through his eyes as the violent shriek of his sword dance filled the corridor, as though the katana might snap in his hands. Shield-bearing frontliners collapsed one after another, flung away as if a bomb had exploded among them.
The Sleeping Knights were quick to reveal a talent for fighting dirty. They piled into the shattered formation and hammered the stunned players without mercy.
"Who were those people?" Yuuki asked as she caught up.
"Heroes of justice. The conscience of the farming-guild world," Satoru replied without blinking. "Let's repay our noble rescuers by clearing the Floor Boss."
They burst through the doors. The thunderous battle behind them faded as the entrance sealed shut.
A bass-deep roar rolled through the chamber. Blocklike polygons assembled into a massive two-headed, four-armed giant.
"All right. This time, we win."
Yuuki's clear voice rang out, and the party's battle cries rose to meet the Black Giant's roar.