The Dome Kureha specified was a giant stadium that stood on the western edge of Old South City. Despite being designated a fast travel point, players were unable to enter it for some reason.

ArFA-Sys and I warped to the plaza on the eastern side of the dome. I assumed it would be filled with players who had come to observe the giant, but there was nobody in sight. The only moving objects in view were the spherical floating guns roaming along the main road. Though they weren't our current targets, we made sure to stay out of their shooting range as we skirted the dome to the southern side to arrive at its back end.

And the moment we arrived—

"Oh my... There are so many people here!"

ArFA-Sys let out a hushed squeal.

And just as she said, about a thousand players were assembled on the western side of the dome. It was unexpectedly quiet because everyone was looking up to the western sky, their breath held in tense anticipation.

I joined their gaze. The first thing I saw were two pillars standing deep in the hills—the giant's legs, clad in golden armor. I let my eyes travel upward. I could see all the way up to the giant's thighs and hips, but anything higher than that was difficult to make out as it disappeared into the gray haze of the sky. If he was indeed over a thousand meters tall, that would make him more than five times as tall as the Tokyo Sky Tree.

Seeing him up close now, I was once again dumbfounded by how enormous he was. He was standing outside the map, but he almost looked like he was directly overhead. What in the world was that guy—that giant, rather?

As I stood stuck to the spot, pondering this, somebody lightly tapped me on the left arm.

I turned to see a female player whose costume and hair were both pink. It was Kureha, my old friend who had summoned me there.

"Surprised you could find me in this crowd."

Kureha blinked her eyes in confusion at my whispered greeting.

"I didn't find you, I found Rei."

"Ah, that makes sense..."

ArFA-Sys's silver hair was easy to spot in the world of GGO when it reflected the sun's dim light. She often hid it under a hood when she was in combat, so I wondered why she didn't just change her hair color...but ArFA-Sys seemed to like it.

ArFA-Sys's eyes and mouth were stuck wide open as she looked up at the golden giant. I returned my gaze to Kureha and asked her a question:

"So, why did you call me?"

"Isn't it obvious? Just look."

Kureha pointed at the giant with her left thumb and whispered, lowering her voice as quiet as it would go.

"That giant...it has to be a boss enemy of some guerrilla event, right? Since we were the first to raid SBC Flügel and the White Frontier, we're gonna get this big guy, too."

"Wow..."

I caught myself leaning forward eagerly. It sounded like Kureha was actually considering defeating a giant that had several billion hit points...or tens of billions of hit points, if we were unlucky.

I knew the other players wouldn't sit back quietly if we went in for the kill, so Kureha probably meant that our party would deal the most damage of anybody, but even that was no easy task. While we had cleared many quests as the top team, that was only because we had the help of Kirito's team, which boasted massive firepower. But a while back, Kirito and his friends had gone back to their old favorite, Alfheim Online. They were no longer in this world.

Seeing through my moment of weakness, Kureha gave my left elbow another firm jab.

"Listen here, you're just as good at GGO as any of the greats.　We need to show the naysayers that even without Kirito and his team, we can bring it when we have to."

"Uhhh..."

The naysayers of whom Kureha spoke were a certain segment of players who wrote us off as riding Kirito's coattails. And since it was an undeniable fact that Kirito and his team had helped us defeat many boss enemies, I wasn't all that bothered, but Kureha was.

While I appreciated her vote of confidence, I whispered in reply:

"For starters, we don't even know that our golden friend there is the final boss of a raid. And if he was, there's no way you, me, and ArFA-Sys could inflict top damage..."

"Do you honestly think I didn't consider that?"

With a daring smile on her face, Kureha lowered her voice and continued:

"Of course I called backup."

"Uh...who?"

"You'll just have to wait and see. Anyway, we should change into our gear that will let us inflict max damage now."

"Sure, fine..."

With a shrug of resignation, I opened my window. After a little thought, I switched my main item to the Sniper Rifle (AMR Breakthrough-4) that I had recently acquired, and a live ammunition handgun (Longstroke Type-Z.) Both accessories I chose for dual-wielding had a reduction effect on their skill recharge time.

Just when I was about to have ArFA-Sys switch her gear to a set with heavy firepower...

The previously silent ArFA-Sys blinked in shock at the golden giant, then turned to me and said,

"Something's strange, Master."

"Strange, how?"

"So, I was just talking with my mom..."

Kureha and I exchanged looks.

The being ArFA-Sys referred to as "mom" was the mother computer of a giant space battleship (the SBC Flügel) that was located at The Forgotten Forest. This computer's name was "Mother Klavier." Even though we hadn't been on that many quests since tying up the main story, why was Kureha bringing up Mother Klavier now...?

"What did your mom say, Rei?"

With a little push from Kureha, ArFA-Sys looked at the giant once more and murmured:

"I asked my mom to calculate the exact size of that big guy...and apparently, the SBC Flügel's 3-D imaging radar is insufficient to observe him."

"What...?"

Kureha and I exchanged a look.

It was easy to forget when you dive in for such long periods at a time that we were not in the real world, but rather a virtual world—we were in a game. So "radar" was a bit of a misnomer. There were no electric waves shooting from the antenna of the SBC Flügel. All that happened when Mother Klavier scanned an object was that the game system would send the object's data and positioning upon her request.

Meaning, if the Flügel was unable to observe the golden giant, it was either a three-dimensional image that did not actually exist, or it was a system bug.

Reaching a similar conclusion, Kureha turned her dazed face up towards the giant and murmured:

"We can see him so clearly... How is it possible he isn't even there?"

"Hmm..."

The blunt answer would be that this is a virtual world, and therefore anything is possible. In the real world, the technology to construct such a giant and detailed three-dimensional image beneath a clear blue sky did not exist...but in this world, all it took was the right bit of code from the game devs...

"...Oh!"

I got that far in my thoughts when I had a sudden realization.

There was actually a way to solve our giant-sized puzzle— Ask one of my friends: Zeliska. As an employee of the Japanese branch of Zaskar, the company that oversaw GGO's development and administration, she ought to know about any official events.

Ordinarily, Zeliska kept her personal and professional lives separate, and she would never utilize her admin credentials while playing the game unless there was a compelling reason...but I had a feeling she'd let her ethics slide a little this time. After all, with happenings like the Death Gun Incident and Lievre, GGO was the setting for all sorts of commotion that went beyond the scope of the game.

"Hey, did you get any ideas?"

Pierced by Kureha's impatient gaze, I decided to mention Zeliska.

But before I could—

"Master!!"

A murmur among the crowd drowned out ArFA-Sys's shriek.

I whirled around instinctively. And then I saw it.

The golden giant, who had not budged since his appearance, was lifting his heavy right foot.

This proved it. The golden giant was a massive movable object, and the only one of its kind in GGO. Just moving made the clouds shatter and the earth quake.

His right foot slowly moved forward, taking about a minute until it fully touched the ground. And after a while, with a deep grinding noise...the aftershock of an earthquake followed his step.

"Well...I guess he does have a physical presence."

Just as Kureha said that, a strange object silently took shape on the giant's righthand side. It was a long, thin line, bright and colored blue. The item stretched from the giant's knees all the way to the top of his head in a straight line. Upon a closer look, a bunch of thin, long lines were climbing up it horizontally. It looked not so much like a physical object, but like some sort of UI...

"Uh...is that his HP bar?"

Kureha's hoarse voice reverberated by my ear again. I half-doubted her for a moment, but ArFA-Sys nodded nervously:

"Seems like it. There are one hundred bars in total!"

"A hundred..."

I parroted, completed thunderstruck.

Any boss enemy we had encountered thus far never had more than three HP bars. So we assumed the giant's HP would be displayed in the same way, yet it had the insane number of one hundred HP bars...and there had to be some reason for that.

As I pondered what that reason might be, Kureha gave my back a firm slap.

"Who cares if it's one hundred or one thousand—if he's got an HP bar, that means we can kill him!　Come on, let's join them!"

Her words prompted me to look around. And I saw that over half the players gathered at the dome had begun to sprint toward the giant. Apparently, Kureha wasn't the only one who wanted to try defeating the golden colussus.

"Don't you want to wait for our backup to arrive first?"

"We'll rendezvous with them in battle. Come on, move your butt!"

She pushed on my back until I could resist no longer. Besides, I would be lying if I said I wasn't curious to see what kind of items that giant would drop.

"Fine, you win. Just don't do anything too crazy, Kureha."

I looked into her eyes and gave her a stern warning. And my old friend blinked in confusion before snapping, "Of course I won't, silly!" Then she ran on ahead. ArFA-Sys and I exchanged looks, and then took off after Kureha's vigorously bouncing side ponytail.