1

What’s up with this chick?

Yeah, I know it was me who said the weather was nice and worth taking a nap under, and me who was lying down in the grass, and me who actually nodded off for a while.

But I certainly didn’t expect to doze for less than half an hour, only to wake up and find her completely passed out next to me. Either she was extremely bold, exceedingly stubborn—or dangerously short on sleep.

I shook my head back and forth with great exasperation as I gazed down at the peacefully sleeping face of Asuna the Flash, vice commander of the Knights of the Blood.

This story began on a day so pleasant that I didn’t feel like diving into a dank, smelly labyrinth. Lying on the low hill surrounding the town’s teleport square so I could count butterflies seemed like a better use of my time.

The weather was truly incredible. The floating, virtual-reality castle Aincrad had seasons synchronized with the real world, but they were a bit too dedicated to the re-creation, which meant that every summer day was blazing, and the winter was truly freezing. In addition to temperature, there were countless other climate parameters like wind and rain, humidity, pollen, even swarms of bugs. If some aspect were nice on any given day, something else would be just as unpleasant to balance it out.

But today was different. The climate was sunny and warm; the air was full of gentle sunlight; the cool breeze was pleasant, not buffeting, and lacked swarms of bugs to boot. Even in the spring, you didn’t get all the parameters lined up this perfectly more than five days a year.

Interpreting this as a sign that the god of digital realms intended for me to take a break from playing and enjoy a nap, I faithfully indulged in His suggestion.

Yet as I lay my head down on the gentle grassy slope and felt myself drifting off to sleep, white leather boots rudely interrupted me by treading right near my head. Meanwhile, a familiar, harsh voice hit my ears, snapping, “Who said that you ought to indulge in napping, when the rest of the game’s conquerors are so valiantly vanquishing the labyrinth?”

Without opening my eyes, I replied, “I daresay this be the finest weather we are likely to see this year, and it doth demand savoring.”

The even-more-irritated voice noted, “’Tis the same weather as upon any other day.”

To which I stated, “Lie down at my side and thou shalt know of which I speak.”

Okay, so the conversation was a lot more informal than that, but for whatever reason, the chick actually lay down next to me and just conked right out on the grass.

Anyway.

It was before noon, and the players milling around the teleport gate in the square openly stared at the Flash and me as we lay on the grass. Some were shocked, others giggled, and some shamelessly set off their recording crystals, flashing as they photographed us.

They couldn’t be blamed. As the vice commander of the KoB, Asuna was a figure who struck fear into the hearts of children everywhere, the turbo engine who powered the extreme pace of our game conquest, while Kirito the solo player was—against his will—known as the bad boy of the class, the one who got together with miscreants to cause mischief when he ought to know better.

Even I had to admit that I’d find the combination worthy of interest if I’d witnessed it. But I didn’t want to wake her up and get yelled at, so my best move would be to get up and leave her behind.

If only I could actually do that.

For as the Flash lay sleeping, she was opening herself to not just several kinds of harassment, but the more-than-zero possibility that she could be PKed as she slept.

Yes, we were in the safe haven of the town square of the fifty-ninth floor’s main city.

Yes, we were within the Anti-Criminal Code Zone.

This place made it impossible for a player to harm another player. A weapon strike would produce nothing but purple sparks, a visual effect that did no HP damage, and no poisons would have any effect, either. On top of that, stealing was absolutely impossible.

So within the safe haven, as the Anti-Criminal Code suggested, it was impossible to commit any direct crimes against other players. This was as ironclad a rule within SAO as the one that said you would die if your HP dropped to zero.

But unfortunately, there were a number of loopholes.

One of them involved sleeping players. When a player was in an exhausted near-blackout sleep after hours of battling, they might remain sleeping through moderate stimuli. Under this situation, a player could be challenged to a “full-finish” duel, and his hand could be moved by another to touch the OK button on his window. As such, he could be literally murdered in his sleep.

Bolder than that was the plan to physically transport a player out of the safe zone. A player standing tall on his own two feet was protected by the code, but someone placed on a stretcher item was freely transportable.

Both of these cases had been tested and pulled off before. The horrid, depraved dedication of the “red” players knew no bounds. As a result of those tragedies, every player now made sure to fall asleep in a home or inn room with a locking door. Before I napped on the grass, I made sure to set my Search skill to warn me of incoming targets—and I did not go into a deep sleep, either.

And yet it was clear to see that the Flash was emitting some hardcore delta waves next to me. I could scribble on her face with makeup items and she wouldn’t wake. Either she was extremely bold, exceedingly stubborn, or—

“Totally exhausted, I bet,” I muttered to myself.

Depending on your build in SAO, solo play was the most efficient way of leveling up. And yet she took care of leveling her guild members and was managing to upgrade her own numbers at a pace approaching mine. She had to be cutting back on sleep to farm mobs late at night.

I knew how tough that could be. Four or five months ago, I’d been on the same hard EXP pace—and once I fell asleep, I was guaranteed out for several hours afterward.

I swallowed a sigh, taking a beverage out of my inventory, and sat back down in the grass, preparing for a long haul.

It was my suggestion that she sleep. So it was my responsibility to wait there until she awoke.

Asuna the Flash finally arose with a tiny sneeze when the light filtering through the outer aperture of Aincrad was orange with the sunset.

She’d achieved a full eight hours of sleep; this was far more than just a simple nap. My stomach grumbling with the lack of lunch, I stared at her, eagerly anticipating the face she would make when the callous, unforgiving vice commander realized what had happened.

“…Unyu…” she mumbled, blinked, and looked up at me.

Her shapely eyebrows contracted only slightly. She unsteadily pushed herself up to a sitting position, her chestnut brown hair waving as she looked right, then left, then right again. Lastly, she looked at me, sitting cross-legged next to her.

Her pale white skin instantly went red (probably shame), then slightly blue (probably panic), then red again (probably rage).

“Wha…Why…How…” the Flash stammered.

I gave her my brightest smile and said, “Morning. Sleep well?”

A hand clad in white leather twitched. But in keeping with her lofty position as the subleader of the most powerful guild in the game, Asuna won the saving roll to maintain clear judgment and did not draw her rapier or sprint away on the spot.

Through gritted white teeth, she grunted, “…One meal.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll buy you one meal, anything you want. Then we’re even. Deal?”

I rather liked that direct nature of hers. Even fresh out of sleep, she instantly recognized that I had stayed with her the entire time—and not just that I had been protecting her from PKers within the safe haven, but ensuring that she got all the sleep she clearly needed to recharge.

I smirked with one cheek, honestly this time, and agreed to the deal. I could have saucily proposed a homemade meal in her personal kitchen, but I too maintained my composure. I rolled back and hopped up onto my feet, then held out a hand.

“There’s a place on the fifty-seventh floor that’s pretty damn good for an NPC restaurant. Let’s go there.”

“…Fine,” she said bluntly, grabbing my hand and looking away from me. She stretched luxuriously, trying to suck the sunset into her lungs.

A year and five months had passed since the start of Sword Art Online, the game of death.

At the start, the path to the hundredth floor of the floating castle Aincrad seemed impossibly long, but we were nearly 60 percent done now, with the current player frontier being the fifty-ninth floor. That meant that we’d been tackling the floors at a pace of one every ten days. As I was right in the middle of it, I couldn’t say if that was a fast or slow pace, but given that it was at least a steady one, here in the middle floors, there was now something of a confidence to actually enjoy one’s time.

This attitude was found in abundance in Marten, the main city of the fifty-seventh floor. Just two floors below the current front line, this large settlement was both a base camp for the frontier players and a popular tourist destination. In the evening, the conquerors from above would return, and the players from below would come visit for their dinner.

Asuna and I teleported from the fifty-ninth floor and found ourselves squashed shoulder to shoulder among the mass of humanity on the main street. It was enjoyable to see the shocked looks of many who passed us. It was only natural, given that the pristine, valuable flower with her own fan club was walking side by side with a cocky, unsavory solo player. Asuna probably wanted to use every last point of agility to race into the restaurant, but unfortunately for her—and fortunately for me—I was the only one who knew where we were going.

After five minutes of walking and savoring a feeling that I knew I would never experience again through the very last day of SAO, a large restaurant came into view on the right.

“This is it?” Asuna asked, equal parts hope and suspicion. I nodded.

“Yup. I’d recommend the fish over the meat.”

I pushed the swinging door open and held it in place so the fencer could duck through confidently. Even as the NPC waitress guided us through the somewhat crowded restaurant, I felt eyes on my skin. The pleasure was giving way to exhaustion by now. It couldn’t be easy to attract that much attention every day.

But Asuna boldly strode across the floor toward a window table in the back. I awkwardly pulled out the chair for her, which she took smoothly.

Dinner was on her, but I began to feel like I was the one escorting her around instead. I sat down across from her and decided to make the most of my free meal by ordering an aperitif, appetizer, main dish, and dessert all at once, sighing with relief when it was over.

Asuna took the delicate glass that appeared instantly and tasted the drink, then let out her own long sigh. Her light brown eyes were slightly less sharp than before, and in a voice just barely audible, she murmured, “Well…I guess I owe you…Thanks.”

“Wheh?!”

I stared at her in shock.

“I said, thank you. For guarding me.”

“Er…well, um, I, y-you’re welcome.”

I was so used to her usual cutting remarks and strategic orders in the boss planning meetings about where the boss’s weak points were and who should fight at front or rear that I couldn’t put together a proper sentence. Asuna chuckled and leaned against the chair’s backrest. She looked up into the air with much gentler eyes than usual and murmured, “I think…that might have been the best sleep I’ve had since I came here…”

“I-I’m sure that’s just an exaggeration.”

“No, it’s true. Usually I wake up within about three hours of falling asleep.”

I wet my tongue with the sour liquid in my glass. “Not because you have an alarm set, I take it?”

“No. It’s not quite insomnia…but I usually bolt up in my sleep from nightmares.”

“…Yeah.”

I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I saw the face of someone who had once said the same words to me.

The Flash was a human being like the rest of us. The fact that it took me this long to properly process that made it difficult to string words together.

“Uhh…well…I guess if you want another nap outside, just hit me up.”

It was a pretty stupid line, but Asuna favored me with another smile.

“Good idea. Maybe I’ll take you up on that if the game gives us a perfect weather day again.”

That smile made me painfully aware of just how beautiful she was, and it stopped the language center of my brain altogether. Fortunately, that potentially awkward pause was broken by the NPC waitress and the plates of salad. I shook some mystery spices onto the mystery vegetables and shoved a forkful into my mouth.

After chewing it down, I tried to break the mood by noting, “Isn’t it weird how we still eat these raw vegetables when they have no nutritional content?”

“Well, they’re tasty, aren’t they?” Asuna rebutted, chewing on a leafy green.

“I mean, they’re not bad…but they could sure use some mayonnaise.”

“Oh, totally. One hundred percent agree.”

“And some dressing…Some ketchup…and—”

“Soy sauce!” we said at the same time, and burst into laughter.

At that very moment, there was a distant but unmistakable scream of terror.

“…Eeyaaaaa!!”

—?!

I took a sharp breath and rose to my feet, hand over my back to my sword hilt.

Asuna had her own hand on her rapier in similar fashion, her voice suddenly sharp.

“That was from outside!”

She leaped out of her chair and raced for the exit of the building. I hurried after the white knight’s uniform. When we reached the main street, there was another hideous, ear-splitting scream.

It was probably from the square a block away from us. Asuna glanced back at me and began a proper full-speed sprint. I raced as fast as I could to keep up with the bolt of white lightning, sparks flying from the soles of our boots as we turned east around a corner and leaped into the circular plaza.

I was greeted with a sight I could not believe.

At the north end of the plaza was a stone building that looked like a church. There was a rope hanging from the decorative window in the center of its second floor, and a man hung from the noose at its end.

It wasn’t an NPC. He was dressed in full plate armor and a large helmet, probably on his way back from a hunt. The rope bit deep into the neck of his armor, but that was not the source of terror for the packed crowd below. It wasn’t possible to die of asphyxiation from a rope in this world.

The root of their horror was a black short spear plunged deep into his chest.

The man had both hands on the hilt of the spear, his mouth working soundlessly. As the seconds passed, red lighting effects spilled from the wound in spurts, just like blood.

In other words, he was taking steady, continuous damage. It was a piercing DOT (damage over time) effect, something that only occurred with certain piercing weapons.

That particular short spear had to be a weapon designed to inflict that effect. I could see countless barbs along the body of the spear.

I snapped out of my momentary shock and shouted up, “Pull it out!!”

The man looked at me. His hands slowly attempted to remove the spear, but the weapon was in too deep. The fear of death was paralyzing him, sapping his strength.

His avatar was stuck to the wall of the building at least thirty feet off the ground. It was too far for me to be able to jump, given my agility stat. Could I cut the rope with a throwing pick? What if I missed and hit him instead? What if that knocked his HP to zero?

Of course, this was the safe haven, so that wasn’t possible. But it wasn’t possible for that spear to be damaging him, either.

While I hesitated, Asuna was giving orders.

“You go under and catch him!”

She took off for the entrance to the church with astonishing speed. She was going to go inside to the second floor and cut the rope.

“Got it!” I shouted back, dashing for the spot beneath the helpless man.

But just barely halfway to that spot, I noticed that the man’s eyes were trained on a single spot in the air. Instinctually, I knew what he was looking at.

His own HP bar—specifically, the moment it went empty.

Amid the screams and shouts of the square, I thought I heard him yell something.

And with a sound like infinite glasses shattering, the night was lit with blue. I could do nothing but watch, dumbstruck, at the flying polygonal shards.

Without its weight, the rope dangled limp against the church wall. A second later, the black spear—the murder weapon—struck the cobblestones with a heavy thud, sticking in place.

The screams of the crowd drowned out the pleasant, peaceful BGM that played over the town. Even in my shock, I had enough presence of mind to look carefully over the entire crowd of the plaza centered around the church. I was looking for something—a feature that had to be present.

The message announcing the winner of the duel.

We were right in the middle of town, within the realm of the Anti-Criminal Code Zone. There was only one way that a player could suffer HP damage, especially all the way to death: to accept a “full-finish” duel, and lose.

There was no other way.

So the moment that he died, there had to be a large system window appearing, announcing the winner’s name and time of duel. If I could spot that, I would instantly know who had killed the plate-armored man with that short spear.

And yet…

“…Where is it?” I mumbled to myself.

There was no system window. Not anywhere in the plaza. And it would only be displayed for thirty seconds.

“Everybody, look for a duel winner notice!” I shouted, loud enough to be heard over the crowd. The other players caught my meaning instantly and began to peer in every direction.

But no one called out with an answer. Fifteen seconds had passed.

Could it be inside a building? Perhaps inside a room on the second floor of the church, where the man had been hung? If so, Asuna might see it.

At just that moment, the white uniform of Asuna the Flash appeared through the very window in question.

“Asuna! Did you see a winner notice?!” I demanded, an abnormally rude way to question her, given our relative unfamiliarity, but time was of the essence. Her face, as pale as her garb, only shook from side to side.

“No! There’s no system windows in here, and no people!!”

“…How…?” I mumbled, looking around helplessly.

A few seconds later, someone else muttered, “It’s no good…That’s at least thirty seconds…”

I passed the NPC nun parked permanently at the entrance of the church and raced up the staircase.

The second floor contained four small rooms that looked like bedrooms, but unlike an inn’s, these did not lock. The first three rooms did not have any signs of players, either visually or through my Search skill, as I passed. I bit my lip and entered the doorway of the fourth.

Asuna turned away from the window toward me, putting on a brave face, but I could tell that she was as shocked as I was. I couldn’t hide the consternation in my brows, either.

“No one else is inside the church,” I reported.

The KoB vice commander promptly asked, “Is it possible they were hidden with a cloaking cape?”

“Even on the front line, there have been no drops powerful enough to override my Search skill. Just in case, I have people standing in a line outside the entrance to the church. Even if invisible, they’d be automatically revealed if they tried to go outside among that much attention. There’s no rear exit to this building, and the only window is this one.”

“Hmm…all right. Look at this,” Asuna said, pointing to a corner of the room with her white glove. It was a simple wooden table, a “fixed-location object” that could not physically be moved.

A thin but sturdy-looking rope was tied around one of the table legs. By “tied,” I don’t mean it was done by hand. Tapping the rope for a pop-up menu, hitting the TIE button, then clicking the target object would automatically tie the rope. Once tied, that rope could not be undone unless it held a weight over its durability rating or was sliced by a sharp blade.

The dark, gleaming rope stretched about six feet through the room before dropping out of the south-facing window. Though I couldn’t see it from here, it eventually ended in a noose that immobilized the man in the plate armor.

“Hmm…” I muttered, shaking my head. “What does this mean?”

“Well, using common sense,” Asuna said, mimicking my action, “it seems likely that the victim’s dueling opponent tied the rope, stuck the spear in his chest, then looped the rope around his neck and pushed him out of the window…”

“As a warning to others? Wait, more importantly…” I took a deep breath. “There was no winner announcement. There are dozens of people in the plaza down there, and no one saw it. If it were a duel, it would have to be displayed nearby.”

“But…that’s impossible!” she shot back. “The only way to damage someone’s HP in a safe haven is for both sides to agree to a duel. You know that as well as I do!”

“Yeah…that’s correct.”

We fell into silence, staring at each other.

Asuna was right: The impossible had just happened. And all we knew was that a player had died in a highly public place, with no answers or clues as to whom, why, or how.

A stream of crowd noise washed constantly through the open window. They, too, recognized the abnormal nature of this incident.

Asuna stared into my eyes and said, “We can’t just let this go. If someone’s found a new way to PK others in a safe haven, we have to figure out how and announce a way to stop it—or this will lead to disaster.”

“…It’s rare for me to say this, but I am in complete and total agreement with you,” I said with a pained grin. The Flash thrust out her right hand.

“Then I guess you’ll be working with me until we solve this. And no time for naps, just so you know.”

“I think that would be more your concern than mine,” I mumbled under my breath, and held out my own hand.

And so a partnership of makeshift detective and assistant—though which was which remained a mystery—was formed with a handshake of black and white gloves.