"Tanker! Where are the Tankers?"
"I need healing...!"
The shouts of the frontline fighters tore through the air, thick with the stench of stone dust and gunpowder.
The assault units quickly pulled back, making way for the heavy footsteps of the shield-bearing line.
At once, a steel barricade was driven into place, massive metal shields rising like an impregnable fortress wall.
A deafening impact thundered out as a shockwave rippled across the chamber.
The colossal stone arm of the boss slammed down onto the defensive line.
Metal screeched and shrieked, iron boots gouging into the marble floor as the Tankers braced themselves, holding fast against a force that weighed a thousand tons.
Four hours had passed since the expedition set out, and nearly three of those hours had been spent locked in a life-or-death struggle with the boss of the fifth floor: Fuscus the Vacant Colossus.
The entire battlefield now resembled a chaotic wasteland. Massive chunks of rubble lay scattered everywhere.
The once-elegant marble floor was now riddled with deep craters and terrifying cracks.
A closer look revealed that the enormous stone blocks strewn about were fragments torn from the Colossus's massive body.
Its arms and legs had been severed one after another under the relentless assaults from Kirito's group and Kajiro's team.
On those severed limbs, the once-beautiful crystals, natural energy cores, were beginning to dim.
They faded like lightbulbs cut from their power source, signaling that the life of this colossal stone entity was nearing its end.
The frontline formation now operated with the smooth precision of a well-oiled machine.
Groups rotated continuously: squads pulling back to recover before immediately pressing in again, encircling the giant boss from all sides.
This tight coordination left no opening large enough for a decisive counterattack from the enemy.
At this moment, Fuscus the Vacant Colossus had sunk deep into the latter half of its second phase.
Its movements were no longer swift, instead growing heavy and clumsy.
Even so, every slam of its arms and every step it took carried crushing force, shaking the ground violently as if it might split apart.
The Colossus's HP bar was now reduced to its final segment, bright red and thin as a thread.
Looking back on the path they had taken, everything seemed to have gone more smoothly than initially expected.
Kajiro's and Rin's teams had repeatedly made decisive contributions, delivering astonishingly precise strikes straight into the three fixed weak points identified beforehand.
Under that pressure, each massive stone limb of the boss cracked and collapsed in turn, crashing to the floor with earthshaking roars and paving the way for the entire team to pour in concentrated damage.
That was followed by a peak display of coordination from Kirito and Asuna. With near-perfect speed and synchronicity, the two destroyed the final weak point on the last remaining limb, forcing the Colossus to unleash a roar that echoed throughout the chamber and transition fully into its second combat phase.
That moment of transition still sent chills through many players when they recalled their first entry into the Boss room.
Back then, the entire group had nearly been wiped out inside a sealed "box" of despair, as the boss merged with the very architecture of the room, extending only its massive stone arms and feet from the walls to crush anyone who strayed too close.
But now, the situation had changed. Upon entering phase two, Fuscus had revealed its true body.
There were no longer sudden, ambiguous attacks striking from every wall, but in exchange, the difficulty had risen in a different way.
Only two exposed weak points remained before them: a brilliantly glowing crystal atop its head, and another embedded deep within its stone chest.
Though its form had shrunk compared to its initial enormity, a stone Golem standing nearly four meters tall was still an overwhelmingly oppressive presence.
Its shadow swallowed the warriors at its feet, enough to make even the bravest players feel their throats go dry as they were forced to look up at the towering entity.
"Everyone, attack its legs! Now!"
Liten's shout tore through the suffocating air inside the Boss chamber. It was not an order barked from the safety of the rear; she charged straight into the frontline like an arrow loosed from a bow.
One hand clamped down on a steel shield already dented and warped after dozens of blows, while the other poured her entire body weight into a metal mace.
She twisted her body, swinging the weapon in a low, brutal arc. The blow crashed into the Golem's leg like the hammer of a forge god, sending a tremor rippling through the ground.
The armor on Liten's body was no longer intact anywhere. Deep dents and long scratches overlapped from her shoulders down to her greaves.
From the start of the battle until now, when it came to taking damage, her team ranked second only to Agil's dedicated Tanker unit. That sacrifice was etched clearly into every cracked steel plate she wore.
No further urging was needed.
Seeing their leader throw herself into the fray, the other players immediately shifted their focus.
Dozens of Sword Skills were activated almost simultaneously, turning the darkness of the chamber into a grand festival of light, bursting with brilliant colors of every kind.
Those streaks of light shot forward, slamming straight into the Colossus's unsteady legs with terrifying destructive force. The ground beneath the boss shuddered violently under the relentless pressure.
And then… a horrific sound rang out.
The dry, piercing crack of shattering stone sent a chill down the spine of everyone present.
Fuscus's massive body lurched violently. Its center of gravity vanished completely.
It was falling—the collapse of a stone tower. In a final instinctive struggle for survival, its two gigantic stone arms slammed down onto the floor, stone claws digging deep into the marble, gouging massive craters and long furrows.
It was the image of a monster desperately clinging to the world before being subdued.
That moment was the signal for the final, all-out assault.
The main damage dealers surged forward like an unstoppable tidal wave. Nearly all forty members of the expedition poured their fury and hope into a single direction at once.
Every blade gleamed, every heavy strike fell, every strongest skill they had been saving, everything was directed at the same two targets: the blazing crystal atop its head and the energy core pulsing weakly deep within the stone chest of the boss.
Amid the explosive atmosphere of the final offensive, as Fuscus's colossal body collapsed, two figures suddenly burst from the crowd with astonishing speed.
That was the moment Kajiro and Rin carried out their most critical task: directly destroying the boss's energy core.
Kajiro did not choose a reckless charge. He lowered his center of gravity slightly, one hand resting on the scabbard, the other gripping the hilt of his Katana as a deep blue light began to radiate from it, heavy with pressure.
Amid the chaos of the battlefield, a deadly stillness seemed to form around him.
When the distance was just right, Kajiro kicked off the ground hard, turning himself into a streak of light gliding across the marble floor.
"[Tsujikaze]… Cyclone!"
The Katana was drawn so fast that only a beautiful arc of light could be seen carving through the air.
It was more than a slash, it carried immense wind pressure, driven straight into the crystal embedded deep within the Colossus's stone chest.
A sharp "Shhk" rang out as Kajiro's Katana pierced through the hardest protective stone, leaving behind a smooth yet devastatingly deep cut right at the core of the energy nexus.
Sparks of magical electricity burst from the wound, signaling that the internal structure of the boss had been critically damaged.
At the same time, Rin used the very stone arm bracing the Colossus against the floor as a foothold. She moved like a fading shadow, utterly silent.
Rather than confronting it head-on with brute force like Kajiro, Rin exploited absolute agility, running along the boss's shoulder and aiming straight for the crystal atop its head.
The Ashen Edge in her hand flared with blue-violet lightning.
"[Starfury Blink]!"
In the blink of an eye, Rin unleashed eight slashes in rapid succession, too fast for the naked eye to follow.
Each strike traced an eight-pointed star in the air, enveloping the target.
"Kang! Kang! Kang!", the sounds rang out in rapid succession, like a death knell beaten in furious rhythm.
The final strike ended with a piercing thrust straight through the center, cracking the crystal on Fuscus's head. Its radiant glow abruptly faded to an ashen gray, then went dark entirely.
The coordination between Kajiro's "single-strike, guaranteed kill" Katana slash and Rin's high-speed combo formed a perfect pincer attack.
The colossal Colossus let out its final roar.
It was not shrill or desperate like a beast driven to the brink, but deep and heavy, like an ancient mountain collapsing from within.
It was not a cry of rage or ferocity, but the sound of an irreversible ending, the last breath of an entity that had endured for countless millennia, now finally fading away.
The instant the last two energy cores shattered beneath the blades of the expedition, the rules of the battle abruptly shifted.
Its strongest defensive barrier completely collapsed, causing all damage inflicted on the Colossus's stone body to surge to three times its former value.
The HP bar, already trembling at its final edge, was mercilessly torn apart, plunging straight to zero like a snapped bowstring.
Its massive body froze midair for a deathly heartbeat, then began to collapse toward the ground.
But in that moment, it was no longer stone, nor the terrifying monster that had trapped them for the past three hours.
All that remained were tens of thousands of multicolored pixel fragments bursting from the colossal form, disintegrating into fragments large and small.
They shimmered, floating briefly in the cold air of the Boss chamber, dancing a final, fleeting waltz before vanishing completely into the void, like the ashes of a grand monument, erased from the flow of time by history itself.