An Englishman in Castle Aincrad

Floor 25 - Boss - The Dream Reaper

As the Concord and their group of reinforcements made their way into the labyrinth, one particular fact struck everyone present – this was supposedly a corridor to the boss, and yet, their path was not blocked by even a single enemy. The dungeon was almost completely silent, and if one was to remove the sounds they were making, it was indeed silent.

Not a soul could be accounted for, which was a fundamental problem when 40 of them had entered this labyrinth.

"I do not like this, not at all." Sanya muttered, breaking up the silence.

"For once, I'm with Little Miss Frostbite on this one. We should be up to our necks in mobs by now, not sand." Strea agreed.

"Haven't you ever heard the phrase ''don't look a gift horse in the mouth" before?" Mito asked, her point being clear – stop complaining when it whatever is going on makes our lives easier.

"Yeah, well when the gift horse is made of wood, and possibly full of Spartans, I'll keep my guard up, thanks." Strea grumbled, and for once, Kirito found himself agreeing with the purple-ette. The lack of mobs was no gift horse, he reckoned; it was more likely to be a Trojan horse instead, and they were walking straight into that trap.

"If what our ally said is right, then there won't be any." Kizmel stated, though he could tell she liked it just as little as everyone else. It was strange just how human she felt; despite being an NPC, there were some brief moments where he could almost have mistaken her for poorly socially adjusted, rather than an AI!

"And that's the other thing – this mysterious ally of yours. Who are they?"

"You wouldn't believe us if we told you, Strea." Philia argued back. "But right now, they're our only real option for stopping this thing."

"Never liked trusting in shadows. There's always something hiding in them." The older woman grumbled but offered little by way of counter to Philia's argument.

"Wait, Strea... what did you just say?" Rain stopped dead in her tracks, and turned to the woman, who gave her a look of confusion.

"Err, about shadows, or..." She looked around, trying to think what she'd said. "The sand, you mean?"

"Vozmohno, my dopsutili oshbiku..." Rain whispered something under her breath, and Sanya, normally perpetually stoic (or very occasionally, smug), froze too, probably with the same realisation. "We didn't understand what she said – she told us there would be no mobs, but not why there wouldn't be any..."

"Surely it's confined to its chamber, right?" Mito asked.

"I think Rain's onto something... some of those sand piles look too big to be mobs though." He thought as he looked over one of the piles. Easily approaching 180cm in height, and...

"One of them looks person shaped too?" Klein stopped to place a hand into the sand, and it was in that moment that Kirito realised just how screwed they were. This was exactly what had happened on the Nineteenth Floor, but on a far greater scale, and they'd just waltzed right in, without so much as a second thought...

They hadn't been caught on the back burner; they'd been caught without the gas even lit!

"Oh my god... they've got a cursor." The same realisation now hit Mito too, the reaper giving off a look that suggested she was close to being sick at the realisation. "Those piles of sand... they were players."

As everyone present processed that news; the bad news being that they were possibly already far too late to really do much for the original group, and that all three of the main guilds may have just charged head long into their own demise, Kirito spared a glance around, and spotted a strange light coming from ahead, along with the shattering of the silence, as groans and screams pierced the corridor.