“SWITCH!” I cried out at the top of my lungs much to the surprise of the two fighters down below.

The axe wielding girl squinted up at the sky trying to comprehend just what on earth she was looking at. Her eyes widened as she realized I was indeed a player. Seeming to come to some internal consensus she quickly leapt back to recover her HP.

The Briar Nightmare took a bit longer to make sense of what was going on. It hesitated as it stared up in the sky confused as to which target it should be attacking. Those precious seconds were the difference between life and death to me.

Pulling my arm back, I activated the linear dagger skill Jab which I used to propel myself downward like a bolt of lightning. It had been a long time since I had attacked a creature from such a high angle, but my digital body remembered all the hours I had spent in ALfheim Online before coming here.

With a burst of digital blood my knife plunged into the back of the beast’s neck, but I wasn’t done yet.

Dagger skills in Sword Art Online were weak outside of stealth attacks and critical strikes, however; they also were fast having practically no cooldown between sword skills allowing you to chain attacks together if your reflexes were fast enough.

Using the momentum from my fall for extra force, I immediately followed up by triggering the whirlwind slashes dagger skill. Normally whirlwind slashes was an area of affect attack which spun my body in a circle striking all enemies around me. Given my current angle and downward momentum however, it instead turned my body into a spinning wheel of death cutting numerous tiny slashes all across the creature’s massive body.

The damage was apparently enough to force the Briar Nightmare to decide on its new target as it sent its two thorny vines directly towards me like bullets.

Much like running through the forest I had no time to allow my thoughts to distract me. With a deep breath I let my instincts take over in order to squeeze every last drop of speed out of my high agility and dexterity stats. Kicking off of the Briar Nightmare’s back I leapt back into the air twisting my body in order to dodge the incoming vines. Now, hanging in mid air directly in front of the creature’s chest, I raised both hands above my head and activated ‘Plunge’; an overhand downward stab. With my blade deep in the creature’s body I let myself fall to the ground dragging a long slash across its chest.

“It’s… You!?” the axe wielding girl cried out recognizing me as I hit the ground rolling beside her. “What are you doing!? It’s dangerous here!”

“I know…” I replied not taking my eyes off of the boss creature. “I’ve faced it before. I really don’t think either of us have a chance against it alone… and I know it’s stupid and selfish of me to be here right now… but I’ve already lost two close friends to this monster. I am not going to sit around and let it take another life.”

Before the girl could retort, a thorny vine came flying towards us forcing us to split.

“I’ll try to keep it distracted!” I shouted running straight towards the Briar Nightmare’s back. “Try to get as many big hits as you can in during that time!”

The axe wielding girl opened her mouth to argue before realizing this was neither the time nor the place for lectures. With a guttural shout, she leapt towards the creature’s hind legs heaving the giant axe for a mighty strike. This caused the Briar Nightmare to stumble giving me a straight path up.

I begrudged the fact that we couldn’t form a party as I had no way of tracking with status. That being said; the focus I needed just to maintain this reckless attack made it impossible for me even to look at my own health bar let alone someone else’s.

The Briar Nightmare still vastly outleveled me. A fact made ever so clear by the near black cursor over its head. If I let it hit me even once, I was probably going to be killed. Not that I could afford to give myself the luxury of thinking much about this. Every sense in my digital body was running on overdrive for the sake of my survival.

We fought for what felt like an hour, with me, unusually maintaining aggro while the axe wielding girl attempting to whittle down its health with her slow but powerful heavy strikes. I had seen my sister Miku tank numerous times in the past, but unlike her, I had neither a surplus of health points or armor to take hits with. My brain threatened to revolt against me as I gave it no pause to slow down or take a break. I constantly scanned my surroundings looking for the safest route to dodge the persistent thorny vines or the best opportunity to get in another critical strike.

The creature’s vines moved erratically; sometimes like a spear in a straight line while other times like a whip sweeping and twisting. To make matters more complicated, the Briar Nightmare had begun mixing in claw swipes with its front paws and kicks with its back paws.

Taking a deep breath I backflipped to the Briar Nightmare’s tail before I began running up along its back. I clenched my jaw as I reached the neck of the beast. This would be a risky maneuver, but if I could pull it off we might just stand a chance.

Leaping off the the Briar Nightmare’s neck I twisted my body 180 degrees in mid air before preparing the dagger skill Jab. Holding my glowing dagger back, I waited until my face was lined up perfectly with the monster’s nose before letting the skill activate. My body was thrown forward just barely escaping the creature’s gnashing teeth. I couldn’t help but smile a little as I felt my arm sink deeply into something soft. My risky maneuver had paid off as I had managed to sink my dagger directly into the monster’s eye.

The Briar Nightmare thrashed about as I kicked myself backwards off of its snout, attempting to escape before its giant teeth could have another chance to bite me in half. I had managed to incur a blinding effect on the monster. It wouldn’t last for long, but it gave us a chance to breathe again and examine our surroundings.

My heart sank as I looked up at the four health bars before me. We had fought for this long and yet hadn’t even taken down a quarter of its first health bar. It was kind of to be expected given we were an off tank and underlevel player attempting to take on a raid boss alone, but a part of me had hoped that our desperate strategy would have pulled off some sort of miracle. How much longer could we keep this up for? What was even the point of trying? It looked like we really wouldn’t be surviving this encounter.

My restrained self doubts flooded in faster than I could register them, clouding my attention. In my momentary panic attack I failed to notice a large thorny vine headed straight for my head.

“DODGE!” the axe wielding girl cried out snapping me from my thoughts, but it was too late. There was nothing I could do at this distance. I closed my eyes clenching my teeth. “I’m sorry Miku…” I thought to myself. “Please protect yourself better than your idiot brother.”

“HOREAH!” a guttural battle cry called out from beside me as the sound of a sword skil sliced through the air.

Risking a glance, I opened one eye to see a man with wild red hair and a bandanna wielding a long katana in front of me. The man appeared to be in his early to mid twenties and was dressed in red armor similar to the garb of traditional Japanese samurai. With a loud shout, five other men of a similar age and armor type burst into the clearing surrounding the beast.

“Waaaa… that was a close one wasn’t it?” the bandanna wearing man exclaimed wiping his brow as he turned back to me. “Sorry it took so long. We were just about to enter the dungeon to do some mapping when we got the message. It cost us some teleport crystals, but you know what they say about heroes arriving just in the nick of time!”

“Crystals…” I thought to myself. Crystals were only an item of legends among players on the lower levels. Were these clearers from the front lines??

A loud cry grabbed my attention as I turned back towards the Briar Nightmare. Just a minute ago there had barely been an eighth of its health missing. Now it had only one of its four health bars left. Were the differences in our levels truly this great?

I had read in Argo’s dungeon guides that most bosses would enter a berserk state when they reached their final health bar but I had never seen it before now. The Briar Nightmare’s body convulsed as something appeared to slither under its skin. I watched to my horror as dozens of thorny vines burst out of its flesh, weaving in every direction and revealing a ball of thrashing vines as the creature’s true form.

The newly arrived group of warriors were all pushed away by the unexpected knockback effect of the vines. The bandanna wearing samurai next to me cried out in surprise.

“Oye! You guys okay?!” he shouted while quickly checking the status of his teammates.

Something inside me snapped again as I saw this terrifying final form. Why had I come here? To make sure no one else would die to this creature. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing.

Shifting my weight I took off towards the mass of twisting vines in the blink of an eye.

“Oye! What are you…” the bandanna wearing samurai started, but I was already too far away to stop. He watched as I disappeared, swallowed up by the sentient plantlife.

“Huh. The kid’s got guts… I’ll give him that.” He marveled before turning back to his team. “So are we gonna let a first floor player show us front line clearers up?” he cried out. “Let’s show this boss what Fuurinkazan is made of!”

The players in red all rallied with a cheer before charging back into the battle.

As for me, my focus was once again devoted to not dying. Dodging the two thorny vines had been difficult enough, but this final form took a new level of 3D maneuverability. Thorny vines surrounded me on all sides, making the journey towards the main body more like traveling through moving tunnels than dodging an enemy’s attacks. I had split seconds to jump through tiny openings not much larger than my body with little to no idea what awaited me on the other side. I attempted to deflect what attacks I could with my dagger, but with such a tiny blade and such a low level, dodging was really my only chance of getting through this alive. In spite of the sheer number of vines, there was always a pathway available to me. It was as if the game was encouraging me to keep going.

Left, right, up, down… I leapt, twisted, and slid my way through the ever changing maze starting to lose any sense of direction. Every now and then I heard sword skills clashing in the distance meaning that the players outside were still attacking but it seemed like no one else had attempted to enter the creature.

Finally I caught sight of a light glowing in the distance. A large glowing gem with vines protruding from it. Was this supposed to be the Briar Nightmare’s core?

From this deep inside the creature I couldn’t see how much health it had left. Even if I could, the ever changing deadly landscape around me wouldn’t give me a chance to check. I would most likely only get one chance at this shot, and if it wasn’t enough to end the fight, I wasn’t sure how much longer I would be able to last.

Gripping my dagger tighter, I threw caution to the wind and activated Jab, flinging my body towards the gem in an almost unnatural movement.

With a loud ‘CRACK’ sound my dagger pierced into the hard gem which shattered like glass in front of me. Instantly all the vines tensed as a horrendous death cry came at me from all sides. I was half afraid that the sharp and heavy vines would fall on me crushing me alive, but much to my relief, the world around me vanished in a cloud of multicoloured polygons as I found myself standing in the middle of the empty clearing much to the surprise and relief of the surrounding players.

Amidst the slowly falling polygons, the massive white UI text “CONGRATULATIONS” hovered where the Briar Nightmare once stood. The digital fanfare almost seemed to belittle the life and death struggle we had just survived, but that didn’t matter now. It was finally over.