The Exalted Hero

The Exalted Hero is the boss on the third floor. The appearance of the boss is a female warrior with long, flowing white hair and sporting two katana blades.

Appearance and Style
The appearance is of a human female with flowing white hair. She's generally thin and slender, sporting light black armor. In each hand she holds a katana blade and is extremely agile. The style for fighting is fast and uses swift attacks instead of time consuming strikes. She is proficient in her sword skills and is able to react to players quicker than they can sometimes react.

Difficulty
The Exalted Hero, being only the third boss, is not too difficult to defeat. A strong Solo-player could match her in swordsmanship and fighting. But speed is the determining factor to deciding who will win in the duel. Ultimately, she is a simple boss to face, so long as you are equipped for it.

Strength
She is generally strong, but just slightly above a player. Her height gives her a speed disadvantage, but she compensates with the incredible reflexes and dexterity.

Background
The history to The Exalted Hero is one that is truly shrouded in mystery. It is the first female-based boss that is fought throughout Castle Aincrad's 100 floors. Many aspects of this boss are plain as its appearance is nothing to be worried over. Though its elegant beauty may distract some of the more "unobservant" players.

Behind this cloud of mystery is her amazing ability to effectively strike at players' weak points in each and every stance that they take toward holding a weapon. Each player holds their weapon a certain way; positions their body in a certain style, and this boss is able to calculate and detect weaknesses in these stances. An important skill to becoming a master sword user.

One notable quality is her special ability which, if hit directly onto a player, causes an enormous amount of damage that will almost surely kill an already weakened player.

Special Ability
This boss's special ability is known as Sauzando·bureidosutoraiku (or "Thousand Blade Strike")

This style of sword fighting uses her incredible skill and speed to give the impression that she is actually fighting with a thousand blades all at once. The effect of this ability can only be activated once every twenty minutes to provide players time to think of a plan.

What is done to activate this technique is for both of her swords to be glowing a bright blue color at the blades. During the fights, the glow of the blades will constantly be moving up the blades to indicate the charging of the attack. Every time she is hit, the glow goes back down, taking more time for the attack to charge fully. She will protect herself long enough to use this ability if the attacks are becoming overwhelming for her to handle.

Once charged, her speed increases ten times for a split second, allowing instant teleportation to a target player. The target is always selected at random and she cannot be avoided. Once close to the target, her blades will instantly slash the player into the air, followed by her jumping into the air after them. Her speed then increases again as she repeatably slices through the player within the blink of an eye. Finally, a "final strike" is delivered on the blades with both blades slicing down their chest, smashing them into the ground. An already weakened player would not survive this attack as it would completely drain their depleted health bar to zero.

There is no way to dodge her, but the attack can be blocked from the starting phase. Once the blades come up to send the player into the air, if the player is fast enough, they can focus their entire block on their Strength Attribute and stop the attack. This will deactivate the special attack and cause it to recharge over again.

Special Item
The special item received from defeating/slaying The Exalted Hero increases the speed of the player's movement to almost instantly cause them to disappear from sight. Striking attacks are also increased in speed.

Summary
Only speed is the considerable factor in determining a winner between any good sword user and the boss. Because the boss is the only boss able to wield two weapons currently, players will be able to engage in a first-time experience into what fighting against two blades is like. Most players are unaware of the boss and what abilities have yet to be discovered, but it is nothing that can't be solved through battling it.

Most players with useful skills, those mostly pertaining to swordsmanship, can easily combat and counter this boss. Other weapons such as hammers and maces will prove ineffective against the speed and flexibility of duel-wielding swords.