The Battle Before the Gate
Asuna was gone for the entire afternoon.
At three in the afternoon, Luo Zhen and the others had gone together to the scenic island on the 24th Floor to challenge Yuuki. Around four, Yuuki took Asuna away, and Asuna still had not returned by evening.
Luo Zhen checked Asuna's status on his friends list and found that she was still logged in. She was not currently on the 24th Floor, but on the 27th Floor.
"The 27th Floor?"
That was currently the front line of Aincrad.
Although less than two weeks had passed since the 21st through 30th Floors were opened, the ALO players had stubbornly pushed their way up. They had now reached the 27th Floor, and it was said that they were even close to finding the 27th Floor's boss room.
That speed would have been absolutely astonishing in SAO.
After all, back then in SAO, players needed around ten days on average to clear a floor. Now, in just over ten days, they had cleared six whole floors and reached the 27th Floor. They had cleared an average of one floor every two or three days—a truly impressive pace.
Of course, that was not necessarily the case.
During the SAO period, some floors could likewise be cleared in less than two or three days, while others remained uncleared for an entire month. Depending on the floor's difficulty and environmental factors, the time needed to clear a floor was quite unstable. The average of ten days per floor had only appeared during the latter half, after they passed the 50th Floor. On the lower floors, there had likewise been cases where they cleared them at an extremely fast pace.
The 21st through 30th Floors basically belonged to the lower floors, and their difficulty