In the blink of an eye, it was already June 15th — four days since Kirito's "death."
During those four days, thanks to Kirito's relentless monster grinding, exploration, and dungeon runs, the main clearing group had been overtaken by a small margin.
By the time Kirito reached the labyrinth area, the clearing group had only just arrived at the last town on the 35th floor.
Of course, it wasn't just Kirito alone moving that fast — he had brought along Akimi, Asuna, Klein, and Agil, forming a small strike team… oh, and outside support from Argo as well.
In terms of pure progression speed, Argo was actually the fastest.
After all, she didn't need to grind monsters or level up — she could focus entirely on gathering intel.
However, many clearing group members were extremely displeased with Kirito's team's actions.
Because their own progress was slower, most of the good quests had already been taken by Kirito's team, leaving behind only the exhausting, thankless ones.
Some even demanded that Argo publish a condemning article in the paper.
But after pocketing a 1,000 Col publishing fee, Argo simply added one extra line in the tiniest possible font at the very bottom: "Is the Watercolor Blade team being targeted by a jealous member of the clearing group?! Details unknown!"
Yep — in the entire piece, if there was blame to be had, she threw it all at the clearing group, without even mentioning Kirito's name once.
When Akimi heard about this, he was speechless.
Seriously, Argo, your bias couldn't be more obvious!
Are you afraid Kirito will get emo and actually go kill himself or something?!
In response to his complaint, Argo downed a big gulp of fruit wine, gave a dismissive smirk, and said, "Huh? Aki-bou, you're only just realizing I'm biased? And so what if I am? Even if I were even more blatant about it, they wouldn't dare fall out with me… after all, I'm the biggest information broker in Aincrad. Hahahaha…"
To that, Akimi could only give her a thumbs-up.
With their rapid pace, the boss room was discovered on the morning of the 15th — and with the mindset of "let's scout the boss first," Kirito's team went straight in… once again ignoring the clearing group.
But while scouting… the boss, a "Drunken Ape," decided to come out with its little brothers, the "Boozing Apes," to pick a fight.
Faced with such shameless behavior, Akimi's team naturally didn't hold back — they went all in and "removed" the boss's precious lychees in one clean combo.
Which, of course, led to the clearing group — who had rushed over in a hurry — arriving only to find a boss looking utterly stunned, its lychees gone.
Originally, Akimi's team hadn't intended to kill the boss outright… but who would've thought the boss would just shut the door and refuse to let them leave…
If it was just a matter of not letting them leave, that would've been fine—after all, the boss room wasn't a crystal-nullification area, so Akimi and his team could have just used a teleport crystal to get out.
But who could have guessed that this so-called "Booze Monkey" boss was ridiculously weak? It was basically just a "Drunken Berserk Ape ProMAX," with the exact same attack patterns copied over.
The only upside was that it hit harder.
So, with the debuffs stacking to the max, Akimi's group took just over half an hour to take down the boss… and of course, LA went to Kirito again
(seriously, do you realize how much Kirito-ojii-san alone boosts the value of LA?).
Akimi couldn't remember many of the other details, but he vividly recalled the expressions on the clearing team members' faces—changing colors like traffic lights, red one moment, green the next, and looking even more constipated than constipated.
But that wasn't the main point—the real focus was that Akimi's "Demon Slayer" quest had updated.
The quest log now read:
"Please search within the 35th floor labyrinth area for one of the strongest underlings of the Demon King—Lower Rank Three, Wakuraba."
The moment Akimi saw the words "Lower Rank," his eyes immediately widened—in comparison to normal demons, the Moons were on a completely different level.
This difference wasn't just in raw stats—it was more about their use of special abilities.
And since this was the unique world of SAO, it was highly likely that a Moon-ranked demon's combat AI would be far superior to that of ordinary demons—maybe even possessing intelligence on par with high-level NPCs.
Going straight to challenge Lower Rank Three right now was clearly unwise, so Akimi decided to play it safe—waiting until both he and Asuna had leveled up more, or until his Water Breathing proficiency had improved further.
After all, there was no way he was going to gamble with his and Asuna's lives.
---------------
Exclusive access : Complete novel on paetron
Join now : patreon*com/DeCakraWnloverz