"Hah…"
Damn it, I want a cigarette again.
"ROOOOAAARRR—!!"
As his ears began to go numb from the Taurus King's roar, Satoru, standing beneath that enormous shadow, caught sight of the deep crimson warning marker, so dark it was almost black, the unmistakable sign of absolute danger, of something he could never hope to fight head-on.
Stay calm. Think carefully.
His perfectly ordinary height of 1.7 meters was as insignificant as a scurrying ant before the Taurus King, whose body nearly touched the ceiling. Just the violent gusts kicked up by the warhammer's swings were enough to make it hard for him to keep his footing. Only now did he truly feel respect for tank players like Agil, the kind who dared to stand in front and take the hits.
He drew in a long breath and held it in his chest, as if using the motion itself to force down the fear that came as naturally as breathing.
The Taurus King's Aggro had already locked onto him, onto this Level 16 character, Yurnero.
"So killing Baran causes the king's Aggro to shift over hard… another nice little detail. Kill the underling, and the boss goes after the murderer."
He rolled clumsily out of the way of the hammer's swing. Even with his body pressed low to the ground, he could still feel the dull shock of the impact.
Well… it's not impossible. And besides, it's too late to turn back now.
Tilting his head back as far as he could, he struggled to take in the Taurus King's massive body.
"Think. Think…"
He kept repeating it to himself, forcing his mind to stay clear.
"This isn't reality. It's just a death game… still just a game."
A heavy blow would not bring gut-wrenching pain. External factors would not cloud his judgment. His hands and feet would not go cold from panic. As long as he had even a single point of HP left, he could still move like normal, he would not collapse in a pool of blood, unable to move another inch.
That meant he could keep struggling effectively.
His greatest enemy was panic, panic that would throw off his entire plan.
His eyes were already starting to redden from tension and adrenaline, and his heart was pounding so violently it felt ready to burst out of his throat.
But… he absolutely could not panic.
One wrong step would lead to another, and then another. There would be no room left to recover.
He could not take his eyes off it. From beginning to end, he had to track every movement the Taurus King made, pay attention to every skill activation, and remember the important Cooldowns.
"ROARRRRR—!!"
The Taurus King roared at the tiny insect by its feet.
But that majestic, thunderous voice gradually began to fade in Satoru's ears.
Even his heartbeat began to slow again.
Satoru's face might as well have been carved from stone, not the slightest twitch crossing it. In a quiet murmur, he said, "Running away… has a very low chance of success."
It possessed that lightning breath, faster than his reaction speed. The moment he tried to open up distance and showed it his back, he would become a target. And against an enemy that used fan-shaped AOE attacks centered on itself and sweeping forward, the safest place to avoid that fan was, ironically, right at its feet, where the coverage was weakest.
"But just circling it around has no meaning either."
There was no way he could kill a full-HP Taurus King alone. On the contrary, if he took only a few hits, he would be pushed straight into critical condition.
Then there was only one thing he could do.
Gradually pull it away from the immobilized main force, and keep dragging it around until their paralysis wore off. That was the only way to survive.
And he absolutely could not position himself in front of the main force. Otherwise, if the Taurus King used its breath attack again, the players behind him would be caught in it all over again, resetting their paralysis Debuff.
Three minutes. That was his rough estimate of how much Debuff time they had left.
Whether by kiting it around the map or dragging it back and forth, he had to make it last at least three full minutes.
His thoughts cleared again. Satoru tightened his focus and moved straight around to the creature's back. With a casual swing of his straight sword, he landed a basic hit that dealt almost no damage, but that ordinary slash became an extremely effective taunt. Furious, the Taurus King spun around and brought a giant hammer crashing down.
Horizontal!
Without hesitation, he activated the Sword Skill and used it to reposition, but he deliberately controlled the distance, not letting himself move too far away. He remained only slightly off to the Taurus King's right, then followed up with another basic slash.
"Come on, big guy."
His voice was calm as dead water, barely audible, yet it felt as though he had whispered directly into the Taurus King's ear. The lethal boss, irritated, swung its giant hammer again.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM—!!
The ground-shaking impact exploded at his feet, but Satoru had already shifted again, using Cold Strike to reposition one step ahead of it and avoid the hit once more.
This was doable.
At the very least, compared to that beautiful blonde Sword Princess he had once crossed blades with, this mindless brute made of nothing but data attacked as slowly as a turtle. It was still within the reaction speed of an ordinary person like him.
The jet-black Forged Blade in his right hand flashed, replaced by the Crimson Sickle Fang. It was not the +7-enhanced one, that blade was still lying on the ground somewhere, and he had no time to retrieve it. This was the backup from his inventory instead, the inferior +5 substitute.
But in the current situation, it no longer mattered whether he was holding a blue weapon bought from an NPC shop or some rare-drop demonic sword.
It was nothing more than a medium for activating skills from another weapon category.
Blade up. Reaver.
Once again, he barely evaded the hammer strike.
"The giant hammer's attack interval is about 1.5 seconds…"
He panted heavily, muttering to himself through clenched teeth.
They were already growing numb to the Taurus King's ceiling-shaking roars, and the violent hammer blows that made the floor tremble had become all too familiar to the players lying paralyzed on the ground. None of them spoke. The fear and despair of imminent death had been replaced by something even heavier, a deep and utter silence.
The Taurus King was slowly, steadily moving away from them, pulled along by that man's repeated acts of walking the tightrope between life and death.
There was no need for exaggeration. Beneath his feet was a ten-thousand-meter abyss, and at the bottom of that abyss stood a forest of burning blade mountains. The slightest mistake, the smallest delay, and the Taurus King would knock him off that tightrope and send him plunging into death.
Their eyes were drawn to his terrifyingly dangerous movements again and again, and it drove their adrenaline harder than if they had been the ones in his place.
It was practically a bullet-dodging game played by throwing himself into death.
He was practically a... madman!
Even though they themselves had temporarily escaped danger, every heart still hung in their throats.
"Plan your evasive route in advance, guide it into attacks that take longer to execute..."
Satoru was completely swallowed by the Taurus King's enormous shadow. Only the orange-red flashes of curved sword Sword Skills bloomed now and then, only to be replaced a moment later by the deep blue light effects of a straight sword.
If even one dash-type Sword Skill was used wrong, it was over. His fragile skill rotation would collapse on the spot.
He did not know whether one could sweat in Aincrad, nor did he have the leisure to feel it. But if this had been reality, he would have been drenched in cold sweat, his clothes soaked through.
Stay calm. Think of yourself as nothing but a calculator counting down Cooldowns.
The Taurus King had already been dragged more than ten meters away.
One minute.
Satoru's vigilance suddenly sharpened.
The floor boss, held in "combat" by a single player, seemed to have run out of patience. Or perhaps it had finally reached the moment when that fatal breath attack came off Cooldown. Its giant hammer dropped to the ground to support its body as it inhaled with all its strength, its thick chest gradually swelling.
The tell for the breath attack.
I can dodge it...!
Positioned diagonally to its left, Satoru made his judgment and lunged toward the Taurus King's feet. As long as he could get to the edge of the breath's origin point, he could avoid it perfectly.
As he moved, thunder exploded through the air, and the floor beneath him looked as though it were being bombarded over and over. Blazing white currents crossed and flashed in front of him, forming a curtain of daylight that ruined his vision. His ears rang with needle-sharp pain. Satoru clenched his teeth, pointed his curved sword forward, and let a single dash-type Sword Skill carry him through.
After all, once it finished the breath, it would enter a stunned state. There would be more than enough time for all the dash-type Sword Skills to cycle through.
I can do it...
A faint curve of relief touched the corner of his tightly pressed lips.
He rubbed the fingers of his left hand together lightly and finally felt the cold touch of sweat.
Satoru pressed himself tightly against the breathing Taurus King's feet and, as if "greeting" it, stabbed his curved sword into its massive hoof, bracing himself there as he began to recover.
"It's just dealing with something fixed and inflexible, and..."
"!!"
He froze.
It was moving?
The breath in front of Satoru, which should have remained a straight fan-shaped blast covering the area ahead, was shifting. The Taurus King was turning its head.
In his ears, the sound of thunder scorching the air became the treacherous laughter of the Taurus King.
A massive impact blasted him several meters away and sent him crashing to the ground. During a breath attack, it should not have been capable of making any additional movements, yet it had suddenly acted with normal logic and kicked Satoru aside.
This thing... was absolutely not just a rigid AI made from simple data.
More than the threat of his HP bar dropping by a chunk, he was simply stunned.
Again and again, from the eyes of a boss that should have possessed no rationality at all, he had seen emotion-filled intent, nothing but ridicule and mockery. It felt like a living thing.
Satoru immediately tried to dash to the right, but the moment he lifted his foot, he froze.
If he went that way, he would lead the attack straight toward the paralyzed players. If they were caught in it, everything he had done would become meaningless. But to the left... was a dead end swallowed by the breath.
If he had been a completely cold, emotionless demon, he would have run right without hesitation. Even if the paralyzed players were caught again and their paralysis Debuff reset, it would only mean another five-minute countdown. As long as he himself remained unharmed, he could repeat this entire kiting process again.
At the very least, there would be a second chance.
Unfortunately... he was still human.
No matter how much of a territory-control type player he was, too much pressure could still short-circuit him.
Especially when he could feel, with painful clarity, that he had been "outplayed" by this AI.
"This time..."
The moment Satoru started moving again, the Taurus King's sweeping turn accelerated sharply, and the storm of violent lightning rushed toward him.
"So this time... I've been defeated by the system."
He loosened the death grip on his curved sword and let out a bitter, hollow laugh.
"Well... it's not like that should surprise me. A person like me never had any real strengths anyway. This little bit was all I had."
Under the anxious, wide-eyed stares of everyone present, Satoru's figure was swallowed whole by white.