Hopeful Chant

Hopeful Chant (ホープフル・チャント) is an extra story written by the author of the Sword Art Online light novel, Kawahara Reki. The story was distributed as a present to visitors of Sword Art Online The Movie -Ordinal Scale- in Japan in the third week of the official cinema release between March 4 and March 10, 2017.

Part 1
On October 15, 2023, three Knights of the Blood parties under the command of Asuna engaged the Ruthless Warder Chief, a mid-boss on the twenty-third floor of the Labyrinth located on the 40th Floor of Aincrad, in battle. After close to twenty minutes of battle, Asuna's party executed a Party Switch with Team C, Asuna dealing an attack on the boss using her «Triangular» Sword Skill that eliminated the first of the boss's Hit Point bars in the process.

Due to the possibility of the boss's attack patterns having changed, Asuna commanded her party members, including the one-handed sword-wielding Nautilus and the spear-wielding Sanza, to split into smaller groups. Sanza's spear was not durable enough to guard against the boss's wide-range attacks, thus Nautilus was expected to defend him; however, Nautilus failed to comply with Asuna's orders, leaving Sanza defenceless.

Before Sanza could retreat, he suffered a wide-range attack from the boss, which resulted in his weapon being broken and Sanza himself crashing into the wall, temporarily stunned. As the boss possessed an algorithm known as «Bullying», it immediately ignored its previous targets and focused its next attack on the collapsed spear user. Just before Sanza could suffer a finishing blow, the attack was intercepted by Kirito.

Due to Kirito joining the battle, the boss was easily defeated. After a short chat, Kirito proceeded further into the Labyrinth, while Asuna focused on investigating why Nautilus had ignored her order. As Nautilus had seemingly not suffered any damage or debuffs, Asuna requested him to explain the situation. The one-handed sword user reluctantly admitted that his legs had refused to move forward, despite his attempts to do so. After a moment of deliberation, Asuna commanded everyone into formation to depart from the Labyrinth.

Part 2
Having reached the main town of the 40th Floor, Asuna disbanded the party and used the Teleport Gate to travel to Nolfret, the main town of the 39th Floor, where the Knights of the Blood headquarters were located. At the rural mansion that served as the headquarters, she headed to Heathcliff's room, where she reported on the daily clearing efforts to the guild leader. Heathcliff became interested when Asuna mentioned that there had been an issue during the mid-boss battle, and thus request further details on the matter.

Having learnt of Nautilus's inability to fight during the boss battle, Heathcliff hypothesised that the boy might be suffering from a slight case of «FullDive Non-Conformity». In Natilus's case, Heathcliff believed that the NerveGear was giving priority to the commands of his lower cerebral centres, the origin of instincts, instead of the higher centres, responsible for reason, thus making Nautilus's avatar unresponsive when at times of perceived danger. Although the guild leader doubted that the issue would be resolved entirely by mere training, due to Asuna's evaluation that the boy had potential, he entrusted the sub-leader with the final decision on his fate. After some hesitation, the girl declared that she would not allow Nautilus to participate in the next boss battle but would work on a way to control the condition after the battle.

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Hopeful Chant