[Progressive manga] Scherzo of Deep Night - Chapter 016

The 22nd marks the birthday of a friend of ours from the SAO Wikia community, so here's a little dedicated release. Happy birthday, Val! Unfortunately, I didn't have any AsuKiri I mean, KiriAsu (romantic) themed stories, so you'll have to settle for a Progressive release for your birthday.

Chapter 16 covers the end of the battle against Fuscus after it drops the gimmicks and comes out to fight as a regular golem.

I hope you enjoy the release. If you have any suggestions/requests for what to work on, feel free to leave a comment or contact us through Twitter/Discord/Email.

Finally, a standard thank you to all of those who contributed to the SAO Scans project for helping us get the raws.

-Gsimenas

Credits

Raws: SAO Scans
Translation: Gsimenas
Editing: Gsimenas
Redrawing: Nguyen Milk
Typesetting: Nguyen Milk
Quality Assurance: Mttblue2

Scherzo of Deep Night - Chapter 16

Links for the translation files:

• PDF
• Zip Download

Chapter 015

Index

Chapter 017

Translation (choice/nuance) comments:

• Page 01: Kirito's using English words "block" and "attack" when describing the roles of the two teams, so I didn't change the wording used.
• Page 01: "Hate" refers to the mechanism of monsters prioritising to attack specific players based on how much "hate" they have accrued. The usual term I hear is "aggro", but Kirito uses the word ヘイト (heito = "hate") and the usage of this word is valid even in English, so I just left it as is. I also prefer to reserve the word "aggro" for certain other phrases that are hard to translate literally.
• Page 11: "You know the drill!" - the original phrase was あれをやるぞ (are o yaru zo), which would literally mean "we're doing THAT" or "we're doing THE THING". Since it was a bit awkward, I freestyled with a phrase that captures the intended meaning close enough without sounding broken.
• Page 12: Sword Skills usually use English words for their names, but due to their Japanese aesthetic, Katana and Martial Arts skills use Japanese words for their names instead (rendered in romaji in the game's system, I presume), so I kept the original and added the translation of what the name means as furigana.

Adaptation notes:

• The scene where the boss fires laser eye beams at Kirito's gang after they dealt too much damage, followed by Liten stepping in to block, Agil + Wolfgang stepping in for a foot swipe, Shivata running up to Liten and Argo sharing a potion with them are all manga-original scenes for added drama. In the novel, Kirito was concerned about drawing too much aggro when Kirito+Asuna and Agil+Wolfgang attacked the boss recklessly, but the boss remained focused on Shivata and Liten nevertheless, while Argo did go dart around the room to leave potions for Team A.
• Page 8 is another original manga scene.
• This manga is following Himura's Progressive manga's continuity, which included an original sub-plot of Asuna acquiring Martial Arts before the 2nd Floor boss battle... a skill she does NOT have in the novel at this point. So, the synchronised kick scene is also non-canon, albeit it is following its own continuity.
• Various dialogue trimming.