In the end, it was still the 40th floor. Four-tenths of the way to the top. 40% of Aincrad.
Hoping there were no problems was just wishful thinking.
"Haa..."
Drifter sighed and massaged his temples. It was their third day on the floor, and Reaver's Requiem had just retired to their inn. Yuna was already asleep, and he was about to join her when Argo's message arrived.
4 dead. He warned them the Sludge Crawlers were dangerous. It was depressing that there were people who still didn't listen.
Idiots. If they wanted to die, they should have chosen a better death. Or at least a meaningful one. All they accomplished was leaving 2 traumatized party members and reigniting the fear players had of round floors.
That was the last fucking thing the frontliners needed. There were only just over 100 of them. It would take weeks for them to clear and map a floor on their own. Weeks they didn't have.
That was why they needed clearers. Even frontliners would burn out if they had to clear floors and fight bosses.
Especially as this was a round floor.
People thought they knew what it meant to be in a round floor. They thought it was more dangerous, that they were more likely to die.
They weren't wrong. But the only ones who truly understood the magnitude of a round floor were the frontliners. They were the ones who walked into the boss room.
Only after looking each other in the eye and accepting some of them might not walk out.
And then 4 people who weren't even frontliners went and died such useless deaths. It pissed Drifter off.
That was probably a sign that there was something wrong with him. He was angry at how the players died, not simply that they did.
He couldn't bring himself to care. He was working out the bloody math. Adding and subtracting lives. And the results weren't to his liking.
Honestly, Drifter thought they had reached the end of the potential of the SAO players. Those who wanted to fight were already fighting. Those who wanted to do and be more already were.
Maybe some mid-level players would find inspiration and become clearers. Maybe a handful of clearers would end up becoming frontliners. But overall, the numbers they had now?
They had to climb to the top with that.
Which made every life precious. Not just because that is what should be normal and natural, but because every frontliner that died? That was one frontliner less they would have to face the future challenges of SAO.
And it would only get harder. That was the cold and harsh truth. They were just two-fifths of the way up. Counting the 40th, they still had 6 floors were losses wouldn't just not be a surprise, but expected.
Three of those were sure-death floors. Drifter shivered every time he remembered how close the 50th floor was. They couldn't afford another 25th Massacre. It would cripple the Assault Team permanently.
The spearmaster wasn't proud of how callous he had become. But he didn't regret it either. Better him than Kirito or Asuna or some of the other kids.
Not that they were kids anymore, any of them. Even Silica was far from being a child. She was a frontliner. That meant something. Good and bad.
Sighing again and closing his menu, Drifter turned off the lights and laid down next to his wife. Almost immediately, Yuna snuggled up against him, and Drifter threw an arm over her, pulling her closer.
Her warmth against his chest pushed the troublesome thoughts away, and he soon fell asleep.
-----------------------
The next morning, he only mentioned the dead players in passing. And hid Reavers accepted it like the veterans they were.
Grieve and move on. That was how many frontliners worked. And they didn't even know the deceased clearers, so they skipped the first step.
The best way to honor the fallen players, even if they had been idiots, was to press onwards and clear the floor.
Which was easier said than done. The 40th was fighting back. 9 new mobs, 3 of which could be considered elite, almost mini-boss level. One for each of the three regions the floor could be divided on.
With his experience, Drifter was able to gauge the difficulty of the floor pretty well. He reckoned it was somewhere between the 30th and 25th floors. Harder than the first but easier than the second.
Going by that metric, he could estimate how long it would take to find the tower and clear the boss room: 20 days, give or take one or two. More than usual, but not an absurd amount.
That meant it would already be late September of 2024 when they left this floor. Not a particularly special date, if you ignored that it marked 22 months of their imprisonment.
Like he always did when that thought came up, Drifter pushed it back down. He had already pondered over any possible time-frame in his mind, multiple times. He knew at the earliest, it would be another 2 and a half years before they escaped Sword Art Online.
At the latest, never.
Not a pleasant thought, and yet it was were his mind always ended up. He didn't let it show on his face, however, no matter how distasteful. He knew better than to start day 4 of Reaver's Requiem's exploration of the 40th floor on such a sour note.
Instead, he pushed their upcoming trip to the forefront of his mind, and that resulted in a genuine upturn of his lips.
Ceba had taken to messaging at least twice a day since the beginning of the week to make sure he hadn't forgotten. She vouched she had already bought enough canvas, paints, brushes and other supplies to the point it nearly spilled out of her inventory.
She wasn't the only one excited. Reavers aside, Sasha said the kids kept pestering her on when the outing would be and why it was taking so long.
Less than a week, that was when. Drifter had already gone down to the 22nd floor to 'scout' for a good location, as well as any possible dangers. If he was going to be taking the kids there, he would take every possible precaution. No way he would gamble with their well-being.
Thankfully, the 22nd floor was a good one. Forests, trails, and lakes. The mobs were mainly concentrated on the forests, with a few aquatic ones that could appear when you were fishing. Nothing dangerous, especially not to a frontline guild absurdly over-levelled for the floor.
Drifter had experimented. He could kill the 22nd floor mobs with two normal attacks, or one skill. Hell, depending on the skill, he could kill multiple at once.
Of course, he gained zero experience from them. Literally. Anything more than 10 levels below you didn't give experience.
That was okay. If Drifter wanted to level, he would do it targeting mobs more appropriate to his standing. Like the Gray Ghouls in front of him.
Roughly human-looking, but with deathly pale skin and rotting flesh, the Gray Ghouls were another of the mini-boss-tier mobs of the 40th floor. Individually they were 'just' on the level of elite mobs. Tough and fast, but nothing too abnormal.
However, the Gray Ghouls never romaed in packs of less than 4 members. And they showcased a degree of cooperation and strategy that really didn't match their status as undead.
The larger packs of 7 or even 8 monsters posed threat even to frontliners, as the Reavers found out when half of them worked together to stall them while the other half ganged up on Nautilus.
Were the ash-haired player not who he was, a titled frontliner with a Unique Skill, it would have been dangerous. Not enough to kill him, any frontliner worth their salt could at least hold their own against this many mobs until help arrived, but certainly a close call.
Still, Drifter preferred the Gray Ghouls to the Sludge Crawlers or the other super mob of the floor, the Human-Faced Dogs. The Crawlers had that nasty speed debuff, while the dogs were just plain creepy, and their bite carried a DoT effect.
In comparison, as long as you kept an eye on their numbers and didn't do something stupid like straying too far from your party, the Ghouls were much more manageable.
It was enough that Drifter felt confident splitting up in parties to further the floor exploration effort. Currently he had Yuna, Nautilus, Sachi, Wolv, and Silica with him, the latter accompanied by Feredir and the ever-present Pina.
Not for the first time, Drifter thought of how far some of his Reavers had traveled. Yuna and Nautilus had always been with him, so they didn't need to be mentioned, and Wolv had also been in the Assault Team from the start.
But Silica and Sachi? He still remembered the young girl who stammered and stuttered when trying to greet him back on the 3rd floor. And also the young woman who had been picked up sword and shield for her guild's sake, when she so obviously hated to fight.
Indeed, Silica and Sachi had come a long way. The former was now a titled player, Dragon Tamer Silica, and a menace with her dagger. And the latter, while not a frontliner or famous, had changed her weapon to a spear and was now as capable as any clearer. More, even, thanks to the constant instructions of SAO's foremost spear-user.
To the Sachi of now, taking on even 2 Gray Ghouls at once wasn't particularly hazardous. It wasn't an easy battle, not like it would be for Drifter, but it didn't put her in the deadly danger it would have were she still the same lost woman she once was.
Her spear snaked around the heaf of a Gray Ghoul, stabbing into the neck of the one behind it. A violent tug resulted in her both retrieving her weapon and smacking the first mob with the shaft of her spear.
The Gray Ghouls were too tough to be thrown down just with that. They lunged at Sachi, claws sharp as knives aiming for her chest, and the spearwoman leaned back.
The mob in the back missed her entirely, while the one in front, being closer, managed to leave a scratch on her collarbone. Sachi's response was to change how she held her spear to an inverted, one-handed grip, and stab directly up.
It was a simple Sting that entered through the bottom of the monster's mouth and came put thr top of its head. And yet, the position in which she delivered the skull was nothing but impossible for 90% of Aincrad's spear-wielders.
From his position in the middle of the party, Drifter nodded approvingly. Sachi would never be a frontliner because she didn't have the mentality for it. But she was far from weak.
"Garrhh!"
Despite diverting his attention to Sachi's battle, Drifter didn't lose sign of the enemy in front of him. His spear swept in an upwards slash, severing the arm of a Gray Ghoul. Then it crashed back down, shearing through the head of the mob like an executioners ax.
Riptide. One of his Infinite Spear skills. With just a sliver of health left, the mob tried to jump at him, but a seemingly innocuous swipe of his spear cut off its left foot at the ankle, causing it to fall face-first on the ground.
A quick jab later, and his spear had gone through the Gray Ghoul's nape. Only shards were left, the mob not even being granted the dignity of dying standing.
His gaze went back to Sachi, just in time to see her put her spear through the chest of the last Gray Ghoul, ending its life with another Sting.
Basic skills were the bread and butter of every player. Sure, high-tier skills like Sky Render or Pinpoint Star sounded a lot more impressive than Sting, which was basically a system-empowered stab. But you don't need a light show when a straightforward stab does the trick.
"Good work, everyone. Sachi, if you had your right foot half-turned when those two ghouls attacked you, you would have been able to dodge it completely. Otherwise, perfect."
"Hm."
The spearwoman nodded thoughtfully, not at all embarrassed by being the only one called out. There were a lot lf players who would pay good cor to recieve instruction from Broken Spear Drifter. She had it for free and whenever she wanted it, so the least she could do was take it all in and improve.
"Yun', any news from the other parties?"
"Just the regular check-ins."
Drifter nodded. No news was often good news. It was Reaver's Requiem's standard procedure to send regular messages every half hour when they split up to hunt.
It could be a pain, but nobody complained. The protocol had been instated after Laughing Coffin became more active - and honestly, they should have been doing it much sooner. Everybody knew that the day one of them didn't check-in, the others would rush to them immediately. Knowing that brought than a lot more comfort than being lazy was worth.
"Alright. Three more packs and we can stop for lunch."