Even without turning his head, Rozen knew whose voice that was.
“Like I said, this is not your personal vending machine. You’re not even part of our guild.”
Rozen said while rolling his eyes.
“Come on, don’t be such a cheapskate.” Argo said with a smile: “Aren’t we fellow beta testers? What’s the harm of helping another one?”
“I have no obligation to look after every beta testers. Everything here was purchased using from this guild’s fund.” Rozen said with no mercy: “You’re not even a member and think you can freeload here?”
“Well, I am an information broker,” Argo said without a care. “All player is my client. Affiliating myself with a guild is out of the question. It’ll hinder my ability to spread information to lower-level players, and they’ll have a hard time keeping up with you clearers. As a result, you won’t get any additional force in the frontline, you should’ve understood this, right?”
“Geez…” Rozen was really helpless.
“Rather than talking about this, you saw it too, right? Kibaou’s Aincrad Liberation Squad is no more.” Argo got up and said.
Rozen nodded in response.
After reaching the 3rd floor, Rozen immediately completed a prerequisite quest the Players had to complete before forming a guild thanks to the knowledge he had during the closed beta and formed Red Wings, the first guild in SAO. The clearers followed suit and formed more and more guilds. The second guild formed was Aincrad Liberation Squad that Kibaou formed.
It seemed like Kibaou didn’t let Diavel’s betrayal get to him. Instead, he assembled a group of players and formed Aincrad Liberation Squad. As the second guild that was formed, Aincrad Liberation Squad naturally became an indispensable force for the clearers.
Of course, considering their leader’s personality, the members of this guild also shared the same perspective as Kibaou, they hated the beta testers as much as Kibaou. They would do whatever they could to irritate Red Wings’ members during the strategy meeting. If it wasn’t for Rozen, Kibaou would’ve taken the commander position for himself.
Of course, Red Wings and Aincrad Liberation Squad was not the only guild clearers were affiliated, considering there were hundreds of clearer. Thanks to that many clearers, the Players managed to reach 26th floor in merely four months, which was surprising because, during two months period of closed beta, beta testers only managed to reach the 10th floor.
Even though there were 75 more floors left to be cleared, but considering they could clear 25 floors in merely four months, the clearers would be able to completely clear this game by next year if they could maintain this pace. It will take a while, but unlike how it used to be, at least this time, the Players believed that clearing this death game was possible.
The clearers started to build confidence. However, too much confidence would be one’s downfall.
“Once people no longer feel a sense of crisis, the only thing in their mind is benefits.”
Rozen said this and sipped his drink.
“Even the clearers were composed of players from various guilds. Obviously, there’s no sense of unity among them.
Since the players were not of one mind, it was natural for the players to address a situation with no sense of crisis.
“For example, believing that your guild alone can defeat a Floor Boss without relying on other guild’s strength. Those people believed this idea would give them a lot of merits such as, making the guild’s name even more famous, which will draw more players to join, plus they can monopolize the Exp, Cor and drop items and even LA rewards among themselves.”
Rozen murmured.
“The result is obvious.”
That was the root cause of Aincrad Liberation Team’s demise.
Argo understood Rozen’s reasoning.
“I can only say that Kibaou really is unlucky.”
Argo said briefly.
What Argo said was partly right. Because unlike the previous floors, the 25th floor was clearly different, which ended up as the biggest trial for the players since the first floor.
Unlike the previous floors where the gap of the monster’s level and attack pattern wasn’t that difficult compared to the previous floor, on the 25th floor, the monsters were far stronger, not only in the maze area but also the Outer Field. In addition to the abnormally strong monsters which could catch the careless players off-guard, this floor’s topography was as complex as a labyrinth area, and there were lots of pitfall traps leading to poisonous swamps throughout the floor. As a result, the process of mapping out the floor’s map even harder.
Under such circumstances, let alone going to the labyrinth area, the Players even had a hard time reaching the next town. If it was not for Rozen, who gave precise and detailed instructions and advice, there would be a lot of casualties by then.
While Rozen was busy dealing with the topography problem, a certain guild used this chance to monopolize the profit.
“Leave the situation here to someone else, let’s go to the labyrinth area and take down the Floor Boss instead!”
The guild who came up with this idea was Aincrad Liberation Squad, led by Kibaou.
Being misled by false information leaked by an unknown player, Kibaou led his guild members to the Boss Room.
The rest is as everyone knew…
When Rozen received the news, he quickly headed toward the Boss Room with the rest of the clearers to catch up with him. But they were too late as more than half of Aincrad Liberation Squad’s members were already dead. Upon entering the room, the only thing they heard was Kibaou’s cry full of resentment.
After that, Rozen led the clearers, and after pulling all the stops, they finally defeated the Floor Boss, there was no casualty among the clearers, but it was a close call, unlike the previous floors.
“If Kibaou weren’t so reckless, probably he wouldn’t fall this low, right?”
Argo sighed.
