The Boss Rush

Standing at the edge of the field, I watched the battle happening before me, leaving most of the command to others while focusing on overlooking the whole situation. Despite the fight just having started, players already were climbing on the walls, closely following the previously formulated tactic.

-"It's about time for us to move."-Mei spoke up.

~"Indeed. Let's go."~I nodded and started moving toward the stronghold's gate.

-"I'll be right behind you."-Su called to us while moving toward supporters gathered nearby.

-"Leave making the way to me!"-Eysia also jumped into the action.

~"Be careful."

-"Sure!"-She kissed my cheek and ran into the fray of combat.

-"Lively as always."-Mei shook her head and sighed despite having a smile on her face.

~"Her cheerfulness is a blessing I am grateful to be a recipient of."~I also smiled as my eyes traced the Pink Fairy's graceful back.

-"Heh, so even you can speak such corny words."

~"Tried my best."

-"It would be good if Keving could also try doing the same."

~"You know him."

-"Right. I know him. Well, at least I don't have to worry about other girls."

~"Touché."

-"Ok, enough of the chit-chat. The gates are rising. We have to quickly get into positions."-Mei left my side and started giving orders.

Having no one else to speak with, I busied myself with my own tasks, arranging for any oversights that happened in the previous battle. Luckily, nothing aside from some injuries and a delay in clearing one part of the stronghold went awry.

Before the estimated twenty minutes needed for the reinforcements to arrive passed, everyone was at their positions, ready to buy as much time as the raid party needed to defeat the boss. To fully utilize my bow skills, I climbed onto one of the towers that had a great outlook on the stronghold and the field around it.

-"How about a little competition?"-Elysia jumped on the tower roof and landed next to me.

~"Accuracy or kill count?"

-"Kills!"

~"What's the bet?"

-"Hmm..."-Elysia put a finger on her chin and thought for a moment.-"If I win, you'll come with me on our next Astral Express ride."

~"Sure, then if I win, you'll be my maid for some time."~I thought about the outfits that certain 'Maid' prepared for all girls close to me, 'just in case' they would need them.

-"Good!"-Elysia beamed at my idea, finding it amusing.-"I'm off to win then!"

~"Good luck."

With the promised 'paradise' waiting for me, I decided to put more effort into the competition, so as the enemies were already emerging from between the trees some distance away, I nooked the first of many arrows to come.

What followed could only be described as a duck hunt, as even without using divination, I could easily predict the movements of my enemies with some calculations and knowledge gained after playing for so long. Using high grounds to my advantage, I shoot enemies one after another few seconds after they appeared.

In contrast to my long-range sniping, Elysia jumped off the walls the moment the first enemy appeared, charging forward into close-range combat. Having fought against and learned from Tyrande, Lunara, and other Sentinels for some time, her style, which had already heavily relied on jumping around her enemies, became even more 'un archery' like. Sadly, she had no talent for druidism, arcane, or priesthood, so she didn't learn other elven combat arts.

The contrast in our styles caused quite a stir in the audience, quickly creating two teams, each supporting either of us two. At some point, Mei had to step in and remind everyone about their job, as while our competition stopped a little under half of all approaching enemies, the rest had to be left to the other defenders.

The fight continued for around half an hour before Kevin ended it by beheading the boss. The moment that happened, all remaining enemies started to run, leaving my range in a few breaths of time. Elysia also quickly gave up chasing them, returning to the stronghold after a minute of walking back.

The first thing she did after was to compare her score with mine to decide who was the champion of our competition. 'Coincidentally', our scores were the same, so after my suggestion that both of us should be treated as victorious, she agreed to 'compromise' of being my maid until the end of this world annexation while I will accompany her on to the next Astral Express ride. With that done, we moved on to the next floor.

-"Finally done."-Felis complained lightly.-"That guy was so annoying, hiding behind his shield all the time! Hmpf."

-"It wasn't that bad, just somewhat tedious."-Kosma also wasn't a fan of such bosses.

-"At least bosses such as this are low risk for those fighting them. I wish the remaining twenty or so bosses left are similar to this one and not some surprise waiting for us."

-"I have to agree with Vill-V on this."-Mei seconded.-"Everyone, are you ready for the next few days?"

-"All the Flame-Chasers will rush to the battle once again!"-Elysia threw her fist up in the air.

Kevin also nodded as his eyes glowed with the happiness of fighting alongside everyone once again.

-"Ellie, this is the first time we will be truly fighting all on the same battlefield."-Spoke Eden, who appeared from the newly opened portal.

-"Mou!"-Elysia pouted after her words were refuted.

-"Tsk. Won't you stay back as always, woman? Don't drag us down."

-"Please, be more polite, Kalpas. I can't stand the thought of so many children's lives being at risk because of that corruption, so even I will take up my shield to fight."-Aponia spoke calmly, though her angry eyes never left Heathcliff in the distance.

-"So, what is the plan?"-Su spoke after everyone gathered.

-"Find boss, kill it, and repeat."-Mobius said while playing with one of her cuties.-"No need to overthink this. After all, we decided to stop playing."

~"Snake is right. I'll be using Omniscia to support you, while Sofia will also assist us with data and knowledge hacked from the Cardinal system."

-"I was able to gain limited administrative authority. Guiding you along the way won't be a problem."-Sofia's voice appeared in our heads as she used voice communication that was left disabled in the game from the time of SAO development.

-"What about Mito and Asuna?"-Fu Hua asked while looking at me.

~"Them..."

-"It's not like they will be able to escape his grasp. Just make sure they won't be talking too much."

~"You seem to still have some opinions about me."~I turned to Mobius, who had a scowl on her face.

-"You think so, philandering Fox?"

-"Ohh! Someone is acting all Tsun Tsun because her turn for a date with Yue got skipped!"

-"Oh? Elysia, how about we talk about the data that someone keeps altering in medical reports."-Mobius's eyes showed obvious threat.

-"I'll go call Asuna and Mito!"-Pink Fairy ran away.

Looking at Elysia, who was much happier that two more girls would follow me than me, I couldn't keep my eye from twitching.

~"Sigh. Help them get used to fighting while being assisted by a diviner later, Sakura."

-"Yes, My Lord."-Sakura nodded and walked toward Elysia, who was dragging Asuna and Mito here.

-"I'll explain some things to them, don't worry."-Fu Hua smiled and followed Sakura.

-"I've confirmed the degree of corruption based on internal diagnostics performed by Cardinal System. A total of 1% of data is unusable due to integrity loss. Worst off is the highest floor from where it originated, as only half of the data was preserved there. I made the Cardinal system focus on quarantining affected areas to slow down its spread."-Sofia brought back to important matters.

~"Keep me informed."

-"Yes."

-"No time to waste."-Mei took the lead.-"We can speak on the way."

Everyone nodded and followed her.

Without any fanfare, we began what players would later refer to as 'The Boss Rush', starting the countdown to the end of SAO.

Our operation caused no small stir among the players, but after the information about corruption was released, support for us reached sky-high rates. Of course, some questions about how we are able to clear floors so fast, or why we hadn't done so before appeared here and there, but using Sofia's special identity and playing it off like we long ago started to crack Cardinal system from inside just in case was enough to quash any doubt.

The atmosphere in major cities changed as the players accepted that their time inside the game was coming to an end. Most people celebrated, missing their families and friends outside, though some were somewhat dismayed as their lives inside SAO were better than the ones outside. All this was monitored by Heathcliff, who took it upon himself to prevent more losses among players. He also worked with Sofia to collect evidence against red players so that they could be brought to justice outside.

Even the matter that concerned me more, Mito's and Asuna's acceptance of our special identity, went better than expected. Asuna accepted it without any question or surprise, only once again confirming her will to stay by my side. Mito acted more like one would expect, showing some doubts, but those were dispelled after she felt the power of my divination.

Naturally, knowing that I'm capable of divination caused two of them to ask questions about the future and how it would be without us. I answered the second question honestly, and while Asuna was surprised that she would be close to Kirito, she also understood that if there was no one close to her in the first weeks of SAO, everything might indeed transpire how I predicted.

The first question was something I couldn't answer. I explained that while everything was recorded in Karma, some beings are too powerful to be divided, and as my Ordination controlled Fate, Fate can't describe my actions. As they were affected by me, their future also became obscured, and so I could predict, for example, their sudden flu that would happen three weeks later, but I couldn't tell anything about major happenings in their lives. They accepted this explanation and returned to behaving how they used to, maybe a little more assured of their decision to follow us in the future.

As all of this was happening in the background, our push forward continued without stopping. Without any surprises on the way, we climbed floor by floor, and before the end of the first week, we had already cleared ten floors, breaching into the eighty-fourth floor on the seventh day.

By the tenth day, we already arrived on the ninety-first floor, where the first challenging fight happened. Unlike previous bosses, this one was evidently seen as something that most players would have to gather in order to fight against together. Even the boss room was giant, easily allowing the original ten thousand players to fit inside.

The boss was named the Chaos Drake, and as its name suggested, it was a giant dragon with a wingspan of hundreds of meters. This sentence illustrated the two biggest challenges of this fight: the size difference and the dragon's ability to fly.

Normally, players would need to create tools such as powerful ballistas and special concoctions to destroy the dragon's wings, allowing them to fight him on the ground. We didn't have any plans to waste time on such things, so we outright ignored those. Our tactics for this fight were simple: those who could shoot it from the ground would shoot it, and the rest was to climb on its back on any available occasion and damage it from there.

Moreover, this boss was the definition of a 'damage sponge'. It took us over six hours of constantly dealing damage to it before we were able to slay it. However, one had to admit this fight was what you would expect from the ending of a story set in a fantasy world.

This boss set the precedence for the remaining floors, as from now on, every fight was not only harder than the previous one but also more fantastical, from having to fight against whole knight order while sieging their castle to pushing through endless waves of undead that blocked us from their lich.

The grandness of the battles was definitely worth their increase in difficulty, though what was worse was that our speed slowed down significantly, as it was only after another two weeks that we climbed to the top.

The hundredth floor was something we had known about long ago, as it was a place designed solely by Heathcliff and he wasn't one who kept his hobbies to himself. We also knew that he planned to be a boss here, but as this plan fell through because of our interference, the normal boss, An Incarnation of the Radius, was what we would face.

Or at least that would be if not for corruption covering most of the floor. The Ruby Palace which was a source of pride to Heathcliff, now become ruins covered by the black and red error signs while crumbling before our eyes. The boss was also in a similar state of disrepair, missing a few parts and having holes here and there, but that didn't mean it would be easier to defeat.

The opposite was more likely to be true, as data defining bosses straight and weaknesses was most likely corrupted and reverted to the base state of the maximal amount allowed by the stat, as was set in case some error occurred. This was done to avoid exploiting bugs, but now it was a problem we had to face.

With the whole area covered by corruption, we had to fight with the decaying boss while trying to avoid holes in the ground. With so many graphics missing, the battle was nothing like the previous ones, let alone feeling enjoyable as if not for my divinations, we would be wiped out by invisible attacks.

Luckily, this boss was made to be fought by a small party, so even when its HP stat was corrupted to the maximum amount, it was still noticeably lower than the dragon's before. And so, after a four-hour-long fight, we were greeted by a screen notifying the defeat of the last boss and a world announcement telling of the end of the game.

Before everyone started to be logged off, I quickly sent Sofia's data to the database outside the SAO systems, preventing any grabby hands from trying to get to her, as now the Cardinal system lifted all security that kept the game from reality. With this done, my vision was filled with light as my consciousness returned to my body.