What's the most unreliable item in SAO?
Surely, everyone already has a very clear answer in mind—even if you never managed to get your hands on a NerveGear.
Without a doubt, it's the Teleport Crystal.
A palm-sized crystal with a brief item description… but hidden beneath that is another description invisible to normal players: "Guaranteed to fail at critical moments."
If you only use it for fast travel, it works brilliantly.
But if you try to use it to escape in a life-or-death situation?
It will "pull a fast one" on you without hesitation.
Never rely on a Teleport Crystal to save your life—that became a universal truth for all players.
So, during the raid, none of the raid members even considered using an antidote crystal to remove debuffs.
Everyone's plan was to immediately teleport out of the boss room and recover with potions afterward—after all, these crystals were rare and valuable.
One crystal could easily fetch over 20,000 Col in player trades.
Raising his Teleport Crystal high, the guild leader Kibaou shouted:
"Teleport! Kalisaier!"
Under normal circumstances, the crystal should have glowed with a blue effect and then transported him to Kalisaier once the animation completed.
But this time, nothing happened.
The crystal emitted no light at all—like it was completely broken.
Kibaou, unwilling to believe it, kept shouting "Teleport! Kalisaier!" over and over.
Still, nothing.
Other players who used their crystals got the same result.
At this point, everyone realized what was going on—
A crystal-nullification zone.
These zones weren't unheard of, but they were rare.
They usually only appeared in trap rooms.
Veteran players in the clearing group rarely fell for such traps, and even if they did, their skill level usually let them escape with their lives.
Because of that, the raid group had never taken "crystal-null zones" seriously.
Their knowledge only went as far as "yeah, those exist."
Now that they were actually stuck in one, panic set in.
"Why the hell is the boss room a null zone?!"
"Shit! What do we do now?!"
As the players began shouting and chaos broke out, Kibaou roared:
"Calm the hell down, dammit!!"
His face twisted into a grimace of frustration and rage as he shouted in his thick Kansai dialect:
"Where's that elite player calm you're all supposed to have, huh?! Eaten by dogs?! So what if the crystals don't work?! The damage we took earlier was just because we didn't know the boss's moves! Now that we do, beating it'll be a piece of cake!"
"Each squad leader, take command according to the situation! Tanks, interrupt the boss's attacks first! Don't get greedy—if you see a wind-up, dodge immediately!"
"Protect the disabled players—get them to the door! Fall back gradually—don't let the boss shift aggro from the tanks!"
"The three tank teams will rotate aggro—once Team One's HP drops into the yellow, they switch out with the others and fall back to the edge for healing!"
Under Kibaou's command, the group barely managed to calm down and began executing the plan.
The heavily armored KoB tank squad, Team F, quickly moved to the side of the boss and activated taunt skills, drawing the boss's aggro.
Meanwhile, the tank squads from ALS and DDA—Teams B and D—stood nearby, ready to rotate in and take over aggro if needed.
Led by the three guild leaders, the main assault teams A, C, and E launched attacks on the boss's neck, blue claw, and purple claw respectively.
To avoid shifting the aggro away from the tanks, they didn't use any high-damage sword skills right away.
As a result, their output wasn't any better than the damage Akimi and his team had inflicted earlier—barely a scratch.
Though they had expected this, Kibaou still winced from the jarring vibration coming through his weapon.
"Damn it! This thing's way too tough!"
On the other side, Akimi stared at the dragon's shimmering golden scales, deep in thought.
Before long, he frowned and said to Kirito and Asuna:
"There's something wrong with the boss's defense."
Kirito nodded in agreement.
"Even if Kayaba Akihiko really did buff this floor's boss, it shouldn't be to this degree. Kayaba said he created this world for observation. If all of us… lab rats die, there won't be much left to observe."
"So you're saying… there must be a way to weaken it."
Asuna mused aloud, immediately raising her head to scan the area around the boss for anything unusual.
While attacking and defending, Akimi and Kirito also started looking for clues behind the boss's unnaturally high defense.
Soon enough, they spotted it—a subtle visual anomaly.
There were eighteen faint beams of light stretching from the boss's body toward the eighteen bronze dragon-head statues mounted on the walls.
The beams were hard to spot and easy to mistake for part of the boss's normal effects, so most players hadn't noticed them.
"I'm going to destroy one of the statues and see what happens.
If it doesn't work, we'll have to look for something else."
With that, Akimi flipped his Nichirin Blade, changed his footing, dodged a tail swipe from the boss, and sprinted toward one of the statues at random.
Sensing his intention, the boss immediately unleashed a wave of attacks to drive back Kibaou and the others around it, then slammed both of its dragon claws onto the ground.
Amid the rising roar of water and thunder, a blue water dragon and a purple lightning dragon emerged at the boss's side.
The two smaller dragons (still quite large) spiraled through the air and rushed straight toward Akimi, clearly aiming to stop him.
Watching the elemental dragons entwine midair and barrel down on him at incredible speed, Akimi's expression grew more serious than ever.
He timed it perfectly—just before the elemental dragons struck, Akimi leapt high into the air, twisting his body midair with all his strength to evade the incoming attack.
But the two elemental dragons seemed almost sentient; after missing their mark, they curved around mid-flight and charged back toward him again.
Still hovering in the air, Akimi slowly closed his eyes, placing his hand on the hilt of his Nichirin Blade, and took a stance of Iaijutsu.
In a low voice, he said:
"Water Breathing, Eleventh Form…"
As the words left his lips, the two elemental dragons reached him again, jaws wide open, ready to bite down.
But the very instant they were about to connect, a thin, black line appeared in front of Akimi—then his entire form vanished.
The dragons' attacks hit only empty air.
When he reappeared, he was already in front of one of the bronze statues, specifically the Qiuniu dragon head carving.
With a sweeping slash of his Nichirin Blade, he said:
"… Suikuryuzan (Collapse-Empty Flow Slash)."
A surge of water flowed across the Qiuniu statue, cleaving it cleanly in half.
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