Chapter 158 - Sure-death

Only after Kibaou's hunched back disappeared did Drifter allow himself to fall down again.

He crouched, balancing his elbows on his knees and his head on his palms. He felt like crying.

Berating Kibaou hadn't made him feel any better. All he could think about was of how many people they had lost. 78. It was an insane number.

And two of them were their own. Ducker and Sasamaru. Just yesterday, Drifter had joined them for a training session down on the lower floors. He had taught Sasamaru nearly everything the other player knew about the way of the spear.

It wasn't the first time he lost someone. Not even close. All their faces flashed through his mind now. Meowlen, Namate, Merida, Harry One... It still hurt so goddamn much every time.

"Dummy? How are you feeling?"

Drifter almost laughed. But it would have hurt Yuna, and that was the one thing he promised to never do. So instead he sat back, with his head between his forearms, and let her embrace him from behind.

"So many people, Yun'. So many. Sasamaru and Ducker-"

His voice caught, and he stifled a sob. He wasn't going to cry. Not here.

"I'm tired of it. I want to go home."

He felt Yuna stiffen against him, and he knew why. Drifter had never said that. He was always the one putting up a strong front and encouraging everyone. Even when he opened up to her during their late-night talks, he never said it so bluntly.

He felt so fragile right now, all his heightened emotions and anger running out now that Kibaou was gone. He hated it.

"I feel at home whenever I'm with you, dummy. But we will get out. I know it."

"H-How?"

His voice cracked. Yuna pressed her face against the crook of his neck.

"Because we have each other."

Gods, he loved her so much. Drifter didn't move, but Yuna felt him relaxing in her arms.

He stayed silent for a long time. The Assault Team, those who were left at least, also stayed still.

From the moment the broadcast came on to now, maybe 45 minutes had passed. The battle itself must have taken less than 25 minutes. But from even before they stepped into the Corridor Crystal, it had been intensely emotionally draining.

Putting the ALS aside, even the other frontliner guilds that came to assist had suffered. Lind and his DKB had been the first to charge, and as such suffered considerable losses. Everyone just wanted to rest.

But they had to move eventually. To open the 26th floor and... Decide what to do in regards to the ALS and the Assault Team. They would continue climbing, that was never in question, but there was still much to discuss.

"Liten."

"Huu... Yes?"

Drifter glanced at the ALS tank. She was still encased in Shivata's arms, but turned around to look at him. She had stopped crying.

"I'm sorry to dump this on you after everything that happened, but I'm assuming Kibaou made you the new guild leader?"

"Y-Yes."

"Hm. Take some time, it's more than fair. But in a week or so, we are gonna need to know what will happen with the ALS. If you guys are going to disband, take some time out, and numbers. So we know what we'll have to work with in the 26th floor raid."

Liten shuddered, and Shivata shot Drifter a glare, to which the spearmaster could only respond by shrugging apologetically. Like he said, he was sorry for throwing this on Liten when she had more reasons to grive than anyone, but they truly did need to know it to plan for the next floor.

"Lin- Dragon Knight Lind."

The DKB guild leader raised an eyebrow at Drifter's use of his title, but nodded in acknowledgement.

If Kibaou had lost any respect the spearmaster had for him today, Lind had earned it. When the situation called for it, the DKB leader had put aside all grudges without hesitation, and risked everything to help the ALS. He was a true frontliner.

"Can you follow us after we unlock the teleporter? I want to talk about some stuff. Argo, Orlando, Klein, you too."

The ones he named nodded. It was pretty obvious what the 'stuff' Drifter wanted to discuss was.

The spearmaster glanced at the stairs to the next floor. He really didn't feel like getting up. But he also wasn't a big fan of moping here where everyone in Aincrad could watch him.

"Well then. I suppose we should go."

Taking a deep breath, he got up, pulling Yuna with him. The rest of the frontliners also stirred into motion. They started climbing the stairs.

Drifter just hoped Kibaou had the good sense of disappearing already. He wasn't sure he could - and would want to - stop someone from beating the former ALS guild leader.

--------------------------

Seijirou was in the hospital, watching over the distressed faces of nearly 70 families.

He felt useless, only being able to stand there and watch parents and siblings cry over the cooling bodies of their loved ones.

Today... Today had been a nightmare. It started when one of his aides rushed into his office without even knocking, saying that something was going on with the frontliner scouting party responsible for investigating the 25th floor boss.

Even so, Seijirou hadn't been too worried. Kibaou the Challenger was doing something, but he was a titled player. And the ALS had dozens of frontliners and clearers. Nothing could go wrong. Right?

Wrong. How very fucking wrong.

The fact that Seijirou even considered it would be okay went to show that, no matter how closely the people outside watched and analyzed SAO, they would never truly understand the game, because they weren't part of it, just spectators.

The first sign of the disaster had been a player getting one-hit-KO'ed. Even then Seijirou hadn't truly comprehended how bad things were going to get.

The massacre that followed next crushed him. Especially so because, while Seijirou felt useless, the players were still fighting. Even when Kibaou froze and the normal players panicked, Liten still led the frontliners to battle, trying her best to protect the weaker members of her guild.

Watching them fight and fail had been the worst thing Seijirou ever experienced. Each player who died was another blade stabbing him.

The arrival of the rest of the Assault Team had reignited a small flame of hope in his chest. But that too had been snuffed out when he realized that, even with the reinforcements, players were still dropping like flies.

While the frontliners themselves might not have noticed it, focused as they were on staying alive and killing the boss, the spectators with their bird's-eye view had.

Seijirou had seen the Dragon Knights Brigade bravely charging forward to relieve the ALS, and dying for it. He had seen the moment Ducker and Sasamaru from Reaver's Requiem were killed, pummeled to death by the boss' fists.

He received the statistics at the same time that Argo the Rat disclosed them. Walking out of his office into the main room of his task force, he had been greeted with the depressing sight of his subordinates staring at a wall covered in screens, many of which were now black.

Going to the hospital had been the next logical step. He was not in the mood for a press conference, and he owed it to the deceased's families to at least speak to them.

"Sir? There has been a development we believe might be of interest."

One of his secretaries, Chi, handed him a tablet. It showed the survivors from the 25th boss raid trekking through what he assumed was the 26th floor. The broadcast was from Broken Spear Drifter's PoV.

Seijirou stared at it for a few seconds. Understandably, Broken Spear and everyone else appeared to be depressed. He sighed and got up.

"The hospital left an office open for us, right? Let's go there. Meanwhile... Increase the guards around Kibaou's room - discreetly. Make sure no one murders him."

"Yes, sir."

-----------------------

Unbeknownst to Seijirou, someone else had much the same concern as him. Although concern might be the wrong emotion.

[ Drifter: Little rat, get Fuumaningum to run surveillance on Kibaou, at least for a while. ]

[ Argo: ? ]

Drifter was typing his messages to Argo after verifying - twice - that his menu was set to private, and despite the info-broker being only a few meters away from him.

[ Drifter: I don't want to see his face ever again, but you know just as well as I do how big of an idiot he is. I wouldn't put it past him to say that he is leaving for good then do something stupid like trying to raise another guild. And if he does, it won't end well for him. ]

[ Argo: I say we let the idiot hang himself. ]

Drifter's lips twitched with the barest hints of a smile. But as tempting as the thought was, they had to consider the bigger picture.

[ Drifter: We can't have a public lynching right now. Our priority has to be stabilizing the frontlines, not dealing with violent mobs. ]

[ Argo: If you say so. I still think it would be good for morale. ]

[ Drifter: Little rat... ]

[ Argo: Alright, I got it. Honestly, I just want him to disappear and stop causing problems. ]

Reading that, Drifter sighed and looked at the info-broker. She blamed herself for not finding out about Kibaou's plan before the broadcast started. Of course she did. But she shouldn't fault herself for other people's actions.

"So do I..."

"Hum? Did you say something, Drif?"

"No, no. I was just thinking out-loud."

Nautilus grunted, but he must have misunderstood Drifter, because the ash-haired player slowed down his steps to look around the new floor.

"It's unfairly beautiful."

"Yeah."

It really was. After the dark maze that was the 25th floor, not to mention the disaster of a raid, the openness of the 26th floor was at the same time refreshing and unnerving.

They had emerged in the middle of a shrine, one of dozens scattered around the floor. All of them miniature safe zones. Linking each shrine were paths of white sand, the rest of the floor covered in emerald grass under a sheen of water. Just enough to splash around a little when someone stepped on it. Waterlilies and other flowers grew everywhere.

As it seemed to be tradition, the floor right after an extra difficult one was disturbingly easy. Beautiful enough to be a touristy hot-spot, safe zones everywhere, no mobs attacked you if you stayed on the path...

Drifter didn't know how he felt about it. He knew it was meant to be so the players could rest and recover after a hard battle, but it felt more like Cardinal was rubbing in their faces what Ducker, Sasamaru, and all the others who fell couldn't have.

Thankfully it didn't take them too long to reach the major town of this floor. Drifter barely paid any attention to the architecture, instead entering the first inn he saw and booking a meeting room.

Someone went to unlock the teleporter, and the rest of the Assault Team dispersed to kick their wounds.

Drifter looked at Keita, Sachi - who had stopped crying and now just looked soulless, which was even worse - and Tetsuo. He shook his head to clear his mind. He would talk to them later, if they wanted to.

"Songbird..."

"Leave it to me. I'll make sure they are okay. Or as okay as they can be. Go do what you need."

"Thanks, love. I will fill you in on the details later."

The songstress pecked his cheek, and Drifter signaled the people he had called earlier to follow him. Kirito, Asuna, Orlando, Klein, Lind, the other guild leaders. Shivata and Liten in a corner.

Leaning on the table, Drifter took a few measured breaths. He knew everyone already knew what he was going to say, but it still needed to be said.

"Today was hell. Kibaou's to blame for a lot of it..."

Liten flinched and Shivata wrapped her in his arms.

"...But the 25th wasn't normal. The whole floor was nasty, but the boss... That was just downright cruel. Even if everything had proceeded as planned..."

He trailed off for a second, glancing at Liten covertly.

"If everything had gone as we originally wanted, the scouting party might have been annihilated. At the very least a handful would be dead. No way around it."

Furrowed brows and cautious nods were the norm around the room. Nobody had been expecting the Two-Headed Giant to be so abnormally strong. Just like ot caught the ALS by surprise, it would have taken the scouting party too.

"I'm not saying what happened is better or worse. There's no comparison here that I want to make. But I don't see a way we could have gotten past the 25th floor without losses."

"Why, though? That's the big concern, isn't it? It wasn't a round floor, so why the spike in difficulty?"

Lind propped his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers. Almost like normal... Except he was trembling.

"I believe it was the same as the 10th and 20th, Lind. Those two floors were checkpoints, and so was the 25th. They marked tenths of the way up. The 25th is a fourth. Arguably even more significant."

It was silent for a while after Drifter finished speaking, everyone considering what he said. Then Orlando knocked on the table.

"So you don't think this floor is gonna be as hard, Drifter?"

The spearmaster shrugged.

"I don't. But I could be wrong. And I think we have to prepare as if I am. From here on, we have to act as if every floor is the 25th or a round floor. It will be tiring, and it will be annoying and seemingly useless. But better annoyed and tired than dead."

The leadership of the Assault Team nodded. Drifter turned his head to Kirito and Asuna, both of which had been unusually quiet ever since the raid ended. They didn't say anything, so he continued.

"One last thing. For the future. The 25th was a sure-death floor. I don't think there's any way around that, no matter how hard we prepared for it. All we can do is try to minimize our losses."

Some people stilled. They realized what verb tense he was using, and it wasn't the past.

"Well, that's a depressing thought."

Klein grumbled, and Drifter chuckled mirthlessly. He sat down, and looked at the ceiling.

"Here's an even more depressing one: 25 is only a quarter of 100. Which means we still have three more sure-death floors to go."