Klein felt that his luck was pretty good today.
Not only had he managed to pull in a pretty girl with a lovely singing voice who could also buff her teammates as a temporary party member, but he had also discovered the boss room on the 40th floor.
The only pity was that the girl's little boyfriend was a member of the Knights of the Blood Oath.
Otherwise, he could've tried inviting this girl, whose ID was "Yuna," to join his guild, Fuurinkazan.
"Honestly… why do girls these days all like that type? I mean, I'm pretty handsome too, aren't I—"
As he sized up Nautilus, who was standing beside Yuna, Klein rubbed his own cheek—which Kirito had once described as looking like "a down-on-his-luck samurai who just lost a battle"—and muttered under his breath.
After finding a safe zone and sending the boss room's coordinates to Argo, Klein decided to take his party to scout out the boss.
After all, they were among the top members of the clearing group, and their levels were much higher than those of most guilds' scouting squads.
Just going in to take a look shouldn't be much of a problem.
The others had no objections to Klein's plan—except for Nautilus.
"We're going to scout the boss room…?" Nautilus' face showed slight tension, and he spoke with some reluctance.
"Isn't that kind of dangerous…?"
Seeing him like this, Klein first thumped his own chest and said, "Don't worry, we're only going to take a quick look. Nothing's going to happen."
Then he patted Nautilus on the shoulder and added, "As a man, you can't be this timid—you'll just make girls look down on you."
"But…"
"C'mon, no buts. We'll just take a peek, and if things go south, we can use a teleport crystal right away."
Nautilus still looked like he wanted to say something, but Klein cut him off.
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"Zheng—zheng—zheng—"
Accompanied by the grating sound of metal, the massive iron-cast door slowly swung open, revealing a pitch-black chamber within.
From outside, they could only faintly make out what seemed to be an arched structure deep inside the room.
Klein's party couldn't help but swallow hard—the sense of darkness and the unknown was enough to make anyone uneasy.
"Good thing Argo finished the boss quest a couple of days ago—if I remember correctly, this time the boss is The Warden Rat Grinnell, the Giant Rat Warden Grinnell. Its weapon is a Bone-Cleaver blade. Every five minutes, it summons five guards called Rat Jailers.
Their weapons are nets and spears. Grinnell's special mechanic is that its attacks inflict a 'Punishment' state. If a target accumulates five Punishments, the boss will execute them. Keep in mind that the Rat Jailers' attacks also inflict Punishment."
After Klein finished laying out the information, Fuurinkazan's warhammer user nudged him with his elbow and grinned: "Heh—Klein, you're talking like we're a full raid team going in for the real fight."
Klein tugged at the headband on his forehead, completely unfazed, and said, "Shows what you know—this is called being prepared… Let's go. If we don't head in now, we'll be stuck spending the night in the labyrinth zone."
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Klein's plan had been sound at first, but what he hadn't anticipated was that the boss room would also contain cage traps—and even more of them than outside, hidden with greater subtlety.
There were eight of them in total, and within just six or seven minutes of entering the boss chamber, they had already triggered fourteen cage traps.
With the boss, the jailer guards, and the traps working in tandem, their HP had already dropped into the danger zone.
Even worse, each of them was carrying at least two stacks of the Punishment state by now.
Klein, who had been constantly switching positions to cover his teammates, already had four Punishments.
Nautilus was in the same condition, also with four Punishments stacked.
Although this boss room wasn't a crystal-nullification zone, the Rat Jailers moved and struck so fast that every time they tried to use a Teleport Crystal, the jailers would rush in and interrupt them.
The frustrating part was that the door to the boss room was barely ten meters away.
But under the pressure of the boss's threat, they couldn't retreat quickly while also keeping an eye out for the cage traps.
"Boss, what do we do now?"
The warhammer user from Fuurinkazan asked between heavy breaths, pulling a healing potion from his quickbar.
The others all looked toward Klein, waiting for his call.
Klein's expression was grim as he stared at the looming boss not far away.
His grip on his katana loosened slightly—then tightened again.
"…Forget it, we're pulling back to the door. I'll cover the rear," he said through clenched teeth after a moment of thought.
"Make sure you protect Yuna and Nautilus as best you can—they're here because we pulled them into the party."
The members of Fuurinkazan nodded in agreement.
No one argued—there really was no other choice now.
"Three, two, one… go!"
At Klein's command, the party immediately dashed toward the door.
Whether by divine favor or sheer luck, they didn't trigger a single cage trap, and the pursuing jailers were all cut down by Klein's sword skills.
In just a few seconds, they had reached the doorway.
"Phew—lucky break. Looks like we're safe…"
Klein let out a small sigh of relief.
But in the next moment, the actions of the nearby Rat Jailers made his heart lurch again—they had shifted into a javelin-throwing stance and hurled their spears toward the group.
"Dodge, now!"
Thanks to Klein's timely warning, everyone in Fuurinkazan managed to evade the spears—except Nautilus.
One spear's edge grazed his shoulder as it flew past, leaving a shallow wound.
It was just a small wound, yet it was enough to make everyone's expression turn grim—
The moment that cut appeared, a terrible grin spread across Grinnell's twisted, hideous rat face.
It stretched out its left hand, grabbing hold of the iron chain wrapped around its waist like some ornament.
With a sudden yank, it swung the chain straight toward Nautilus.
In the blink of an eye, Nautilus was bound tight.
After seizing him, Grinnell quickly retreated to the deepest part of the boss chamber.
There, it planted its Bone-Cleaver into the ground and let out a piercing roar.
The roar seemed to trigger some hidden mechanism: a beam of light fell upon the arch-shaped structure that had been lurking in the darkness—
A guillotine.
A massive guillotine.
Grinnell forced the still-struggling Nautilus onto the groove of the execution device, snapped the stock shut over his neck, and then picked the Bone-Cleaver back up.
"Eiji!"
Yuna's face went deathly pale as she looked at Nautilus's despair-filled expression.
"Damn it… at this distance, we'll never make it."
Klein cursed as he sprinted toward the guillotine.
Grinnell let out two almost human-like chuckles before slashing through the rope holding the enormous blade of the guillotine.
The rope snapped, and the trapezoidal blade plummeted downward.
Nautilus slowly closed his eyes.
But just then, at the entrance to the boss room, a flash of blue light burst forth—along with a voice:
"Water Breathing, Eleventh Form: Suikuryuzan!"
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