A procession of downbeat players marched through the 56th floor, their minds still on the terrifying field-boss they had just seen.
It wasn't like they had never faced flying-type field-bosses before. After 55 floors, they had experienced all kinds of enemies.
But it was exactly that experience that shook all the Reavers. They hadn't felt the kind of pressure the giant avian put off in a long time. Not from a field-boss, at least.
"There has to be something we missed. A mechanic, or some loophole. This isn't a round floor, and pain was only introduced a handful of floors ago. There shouldn't be such a massive spike in difficulty this soon. It doesn't track with how Kayaba works."
Agil sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than the others.
"The town Keita and the others are in. That's the catch. We just have to figure out how it relates to the field-boss."
Kirito put forth what sounded like a very reasonable proposal. So why was Drifter's gut churning?
"At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the catch is. We just have to kill it. Like we do with everything."
The Black Swordsman frowned at the veiled reprimand. And he wasn't the only one.
"What's wrong, dummy?"
The spearmaster mellowed out considerably when his wife grabbed his hand and pressed her thumbs on his palm, a little gesture that was her equivalent of him running his fingers through her hair.
"I don't know. I just... I can't help but feel this is Kayaba purposefully making trouble for us."
Now, several of the other Reavers who had been periferically following the conversation had their eyebrows disappear over their hairline.
Two and a half years of Sword Art Online. Tens of thousands of battles fought over that time. Nearly 6.000 players buried.
And with all those numbers, they could count on one hand the times Drifter's instincts led them astray.
The change in the Reavers' demeanor was striking. Their already tense postures from the brief run-in with the field-boss suddenly screamed wariness. Weapons were checked, starting stances for skills taken on pure muscle memory.
"By 'us', do you mean players... or us 'us'?"
One was more terrifying than the other. And how long Drifter took to find his answer didn't inspire confidence. Nor did the fact he didn't actually have one.
"Let's link up with Keita and the others. Eyes open. Kill everything that doesn't have a green cursor."
They could do that.
The somewhat relaxed, if cautious, way the Reavers were moving changed. Now they were all sharp edges and cold focus.
Any mobs that crossed their path were swiftly dispatched. Indeed, there were very few things that could actually give a fully assembled Reaver's Requiem pause.
After quickening their pace, it took them just short of half an hour to make the track to the settlement Keita and the other Black Cats had found.
There, they saw their three friends waiting, while other clearers also loomed around.
"Leader!"
Sachi was the first to come running towards them, the long pike she favored gripped tightly in her grasp.
"Slow down, Sachi. Breathe."
The spearmaster put his hands on the young woman's shoulder, steadying her, and frowned. Sachi was too panicked for just being in a no-safe-zone settlement.
"What's the problem?"
"A big as fuck bird, that's the problem."
Tetsuo candidly ignored the muttered 'language' from Asuna - sometimes they cursed in front of her just to get a rise out of the fencer. His eyes were wide, and his face pale.
Now that Drifter looked around, all the players were like that. And sticking very close to walls of the anthill-like houses of the NPCs.
NPCs which couldn't be seen.
"Keita, explain. Don't leave out any detail."
The staff-user shook his body, then nodded, a grave expression on his face.
"Not much to tell, Drifter. We were just waiting for you when the wind started blowing. Next thing we know, the NPCs are screaming and running to their homes. Then this huge shadow passes over us. By the time I looked up, it had already swooped down and grabbed a NPC and taken off with them. It was a bird of some kind, only the size of a truck. And--"
"All white feathers. Yeah, I know. We saw it too. Nabbed a pair of Human-Faced Dogs from right in front of us."
"Fucking terrifying, that's what it was."
"And it's taking NPCs? How long before it decides a player is also an acceptable snack?"
"Don't jinx us, Naut."
"Alright, calm down, everyone. First of all, what do we know?"
Drifter raised his voice before they devolved into pure speculation. Silica put up her hand.
"Kizmel called it the Terror of Clouds."
The dark elf nodded.
"A legend amongst my people. A being of great evil."
"Okay. Is that its name? Did anyone happen to catch it when it flew by?"
His Reavers shook their heads. In both occasions, they had been too stunned by the appearance of the field-boss, and, when they came to their senses, it was too far for Searching to yield any results or identify it.
"Kura the Sky Lord."
A new voice cut into their conversation, and Drifter looked up to see the large vanguard squad leader of the Knights of the Blood Oath, Godfree, entering their circle. The giant of a man, usually loud and boisterous, was disturbingly serious, his expression set in grim lines.
"Godfree. You saw it too?"
"Saw it? Hahahaha!"
His laughter sounded more like sobs, and all the Reavers felt that familiar sinking feeling in their stomachs. There was only one reason why a frontliner laughed like that.
"We didn't just see it, Broken Spear. It took Mila. Right in front of us."
Drifter closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He recognized the name, though he needed a few seconds to put a face to it. One of KoB's founding members, and leader of one of their clearer parties.
"I'm sorry, Godfree."
"She lived 15 minutes after that monster took her. We watched her health whittle away in our HUDs, and could do nothing about it."
Godfree's voice was tinged with the all-too-familiar roughness of self-loathing one got after watching someone die while you were powerless to stop it. A feeling all frontliners knew intimately.
But something Godfree had said stuck to him, and Drifter forced his callous persona of leader of the Assault Team to the front.
"You said she still lived for 15 minutes after being taken?"
Godfree scowled, but nodded.
"What about it?"
The spearmaster ignored his rudeness. It was excused in this situation.
"Mila was a broadsword-user, right? She shouldn't have the defense or HP to survive that long alone against a field-boss."
That got Godfree thinking. Drifter was right.
"I don't know..."
"There must be some other factor at play here. Maybe the boss isn't as strong as it looks like? Just very fast?"
"An event triggered mechanic?"
Drifter frowned.
"Possibly. Alright, I'll be redirecting floor exploration and Assault Team priorities. Focus on story quests and making, leave the the tower entrance search and labyrinth exploration for later. Find everything we can about the field-boss as quickly as possible. I want to be in a position to take it down in 48 hours."
"You'll have to run that by the others."
Kirito was referring to the rest of the guild leaders in the Assault Team. While no-one contested Drifter's leadership during raids, taking over control of other guilds outside of it was an entirely different story.
But the spearmaster dismissed the younger man's concern. He had nurtured enough trust amongst the frontliners that they would at least hear him out. And nobody who lived this long in the Assault Team was stupid. They would see the threat of the field-boss for what it was.
"We will tackle it like it's a floor boss raid. Kirito, get Argo here, I'll message Akari. Asuna, Ran, Sinon, contact the rest of the Assault Team, explain the situation to those who aren't aware already. Godfree, we'll leave Heathcliff to you. Everyone else, start messaging all the clearers you know. Finding intel on the field-boss is priority number one right now, they have to set everything else aside."
They all nodded, and started doing as they had been told. Drifter himself started composing his message to Akari when Yuna hugged his arm.
"You know we are going to lose more people to it, right, dummy?"
"I do. Haa... this fucked up game. Just when you think it can't get any worse..."
"It always does."
"Yeah."
The spearmaster sent his message to Akari and hugged Yuna around the waist.
They stayed silent until Drifter's attention was caught by the NPCs starting to come pit of their hiding holes. True to the basic AIs they had, they acted like nothing was wrong even though one of them had been snatched up less than an hour before.
Drifter blinked. Snatched up.
"Son of a bitch!"
The sudden expletive, yelled in a not at all discrete manner, startled not just Yuna but the rest of the Reavers and Godfree's party.
"What's wrong, dummy?"
Yuna looked worried and a little hurt when he pulled her arm out of her grasp, but Drifter was too apoplectic to notice. He lashed out with his spear, sending a Horizontal against the side of a house.
[ Immortal Object ]
"That bastard!"
The Reavers glanced at each other. Cursing at empty air was very unlike the Drifter they knew.
"Who?"
"Kayaba! I know what he wants us to do! The fucking gall on him! So much for fairness, hum?! Asshole!"
The last sentences were yelled while looking at the sky.
"Drifter, you are not making any sense."
Nautilus put a hand on his shoulder to calm him down, and the spearmaster forced himself to take a couple deep breaths. He still stabbed his spear into the ground with unnecessary force.
"The NPCs! He wants us to use them as bait! That's why the village has no safe zone."
He saw the realization dawning on the faces of the players around him. And then the second realization coming only to Reaver's Requiem while the KoB party looked on confused at the snarls of rage that took to all of their faces without exception.
"He's targeting us."
"No, he is experimenting on us. He wants to see how we react. What we choose."
"I'm going to fucking kill him. I don't care what happens, when we get out I'm breaking his neck."
"Not if I get to him first."
"Get in line, you two. We can all get our stabs in."
"That fucking monster!"
Usually someone would have been scandalized and scolded Silica for using a curse word.
But right now, the person who usually had that job was trying to be the first to accomplish the feat of causing someone to drop dead simply by using the power of her mind.
If Drifter had been furious, then Asuna and Kirito were livid. Because they knew exactlyvwho had prompted Kayaba to do this... experiment.
They were too angry to talk, and who could blame them? She was their daughter.
"Err... sorry, but can one of you explain what the hell got you all so upset?"
Godfree tapped the blade of his axe uneasily. He had never seen the Reavers so enraged. It was particularly disturbing because, while some of them were known to have tempers, like Broken Spear Drifter when others questioned the duty of the Assault Team, or Lightning Flash Asuna when someone badmouthed Black Swordsman Kirito, others were usually cool as a cucumber.
Key word being 'usually'. Because right now, Aero Huntress Sinon, Precise Blade Ran, Dark Elf Kizmel and even the untitled Vallerk, who were some of the calmest, most cool-headed players in Aincrad, looked fit to, well, kill someone.
But it was Drifter who answered. And Godfree shivered, because, while the spearmaster's expression was still contorted in rage, his voice was cold.
"Because there is only one group of players who would care about using NPCs as bait, Godfree. Only one guild which counts two awakened NPCs among its members."
Suddenly Drifter ripped his spear off the ground, sending dirt flying everywhere, before slashing horizontally with a deep red skill Godfree had never seen him use.
The KoB players almost doubled over in discomfort due to the high-pitched whine the skill created. It was like the very air around them was screaming.
"Kayaba's still testing us. Pushing, pushing and pushing. Until we rise or break."
The guild leader of Reaver's Requiem, arguably Sword Art Online's strongest player, returned his spear to its sheath, most of his grievances vented on that one slash.
Vented, but not forgotten.
"He wants to see where we draw the line. Where our morals lay."
Would they choose to sacrifice NPCs, being made of data and with no really feelings or emotions - no consequences? If so, how would Kizmel and Yui react to it? All valuable data Kayaba would dearly enjoy analyzing.
Or would Reaver's Requiem deny what was very obviously the easiest, safest way to defeat the field-boss? The tactic that might result in no more casualties amongst the players.
The fallout from choosing that option could very well break the Assault Team.
Kayaba hadn't planned any of that originally. But plans must adapt to the changes in circumstance. And Reaver's Requiem certainly had brought many unknown variables to SAO that Kayaba had never considered.
And he wouldn't have it any other way. Only when they broke every mold could his heroes truly be deserving of that adage.