2

Asuna and I retrieved the rope as evidence in the case and left the room, returning to the entrance of the church. I’d already placed the black short spear in my inventory before going into the building.

I thanked two familiar players who’d stood guard at the door, and they confirmed that no people had emerged since I went inside. I walked into the plaza and raised a hand to the crowd of onlookers, calling out, “Pardon me, but whoever first spotted what happened, please come and speak to us!”

A few seconds later, a female player reluctantly emerged from the crowd. I didn’t recognize her. She had a normal NPC-made longsword—probably a tourist from the middle floors.

Unfortunately, she looked a little frightened of me, so Asuna took the lead and gently inquired, “Sorry, I know this has been scary. What’s your name?”

“Uh…uh, my name is Yolko.”

Something in her frail voice was familiar to me. I interjected, “Were you the one who screamed first?”

“Y-yes.”

The woman named Yolko nodded, her wavy, dark blue hair bobbing. Based on the appearance of her avatar, I judged her to be seventeen or eighteen years old.

Her large, innocent eyes, as blue as her hair, suddenly filled with tears.

“I…I am…I was…friends with the person who was just killed. We just had dinner together, and then we separated in the square…and…and then…”

She covered her mouth with both hands, unable to continue. Asuna put an arm around her slender shoulders and guided her into the church. They made their way to one of the long pew benches and sat down together.

I kept a bit of distance and waited for the girl to calm down. If she did see her friend PKed in such a cruel manner right before her eyes, the shock would be unbelievable.

Asuna rubbed Yolko’s back until she stopped crying, and the girl apologized in a weak, tiny voice.

“No, it’s fine,” Asuna assured her. “I’ll wait as long as it takes. You just tell me more when you’re ready, okay?”

“Okay. I…I think I’m fine now.”

Yolko moved away from Asuna’s hand and nodded, showing herself to be tougher than she appeared.

“His name is…was Kains. We were once in the same guild together…We still party up and eat together sometimes…So today, we came here to have dinner…”

She shut her eyes, then continued, her voice still trembling. “But there were so many people…I lost sight of him in the plaza. I was looking around for him when suddenly, a person—Kains—fell out of the church window, hung on that rope…with the spear in his chest…”

“Did you see anyone else?” Asuna asked. Yolko paused.

Then she slowly but surely nodded. “Yes…For just a moment, I felt like I saw someone standing…behind Kains…”

Unconsciously, I clenched my fists. The killer had been in that room. Which meant that right after pushing the victim out of the window, the killer had just waltzed right into public to escape.

That would have to mean they used some kind of Hiding-enabling gear, but such items were less effective when the user was moving. Perhaps they had an ultra-high personal Hiding skill that would be enough to make up the difference.

The term assassin flickered ominously through my mind.

Could there be a category of weapon skills in SAO that even Asuna and I didn’t know about yet? What if it were capable of nullifying the Anti-Criminal Code…?

Asuna’s back trembled for a moment—she had arrived at the same conclusion. But she looked up at once and asked Yolko, “Did you recognize the person?”

“…”

Yolko pursed her lips in deep thought, then shook her head.

This time it was my turn to ask gently, “I’m sorry if this is unpleasant, but…can you think of any reason why Kains might have been targeted…?”

As I was afraid, Yolko instantly tensed up. It was understandable—she had just witnessed the murder of her friend, and I was asking if he’d done something to deserve it. It was a hurtful question, I knew, but it had to be done. If someone out there held a grudge against Kains, that would be our best clue.

But this time, Yolko only shook her head. Disappointed, I said, “I see. Sorry to ask that.”

Of course, it was possible that Yolko just wasn’t aware of such a thing. But whoever killed Kains was both an actual murderer and a PKer in the traditional MMO sense. Player-killing was an act that some players engaged in for that reason alone. The red players lurking in the darkness of Aincrad at this very moment were tried-and-true examples of that archetype.

That meant the potential suspects were every orange or red player, of which there were hundreds, as well as anyone who might be subconsciously harboring that desire within them. There was no way to know how to narrow down that list.

Once again arriving at the same conclusion simultaneously, Asuna let out a powerless sigh.

* * *

Yolko was afraid to return to the lower floors alone, so we sent her to the nearest inn and came back to the teleport square.

Thirty minutes had passed since the incident, and the crowd was thinning out by now. Still, there were a good twenty players, mostly front-line fighters, who were waiting to hear an update from us.

Asuna and I told them that the deceased was named Kains, and that we had no clues yet on how the murder was achieved. And most importantly, that there might be some kind of undiscovered method of safe-haven PKing at work.

“…So can you send a warning far and wide that for the moment, it’s not entirely safe even in town?” I finished. The group accepted the task with grim faces.

“All right. I’ll ask an info broker to include this in the next newspaper,” said a player in one of the major guilds, speaking for the group. They trickled away after that. I checked the time in the corner of my view and was surprised to see that it was still just after seven o’clock.

“So…what now?” I asked Asuna.

She instantly replied. “Let’s examine the information we currently have, particularly the rope and spear. If we can tell where they came from, we might be able to track down the killer.”

“I see…So if there’s no motive, we have to go on evidence. We’ll need the Appraisal skill for that. Hey, you…I don’t suppose you’ve been working on that.”

“Neither have you. In fact,” Asuna added, fixing me with a sudden look, “would you mind not calling me just ‘hey, you’?”

“Huh? Uh…oh, right…So, um…My Lady? Vice Commander? …Our Lady Flash?”

The last one was a special term used by the members of her fan club in their periodical. Sure enough, she blasted me to shreds with her eye lasers before turning away in a huff. “Just ‘Asuna’ is fine. You called me that earlier.”

“G-gotcha,” I said, trembling. It was time to change the topic. “So, the Appraisal skill. Got any friends who are handy with that…?”

“Hmm.” She thought briefly, then shook her head. “I have a friend who runs an armory, but this is her busiest period, and I doubt she’ll be able to help right away…”

True enough, this was the time of day that the most adventurers would be performing equipment maintenance and purchases—the end of their day’s travels.

“Good point. Well, I could ask a general store ax wielder I know, though I don’t think his skill with it is the best.”

“Are you talking about that…big fellow? Agil, right?” she asked as I opened my window and started to type a message. “But if he runs a shop, he’ll be just as busy right now.”

“Don’t care,” I said, mercilessly striking the SEND button.

Asuna and I emerged from the teleport gate into Algade, the city on the fiftieth floor, and the usual hustle and bustle it featured.

It hadn’t been long since this city was activated for the benefit of the player population, but the market district was already crammed with countless player-run shops—primarily because the base cost for establishing a shop here was far cheaper than in the cities on lower floors.

Naturally, that also lowered the average space and appearance of the shops, but the cramped, uniquely Asian chaos—or that of a particular electronics district in Tokyo—was a favorite of many players. I happened to like it, too, and was making plans to buy a home here so I could move in.

Amid the exotic BGM, raucous hawking of wares, and scent of cheap stall food wafting through the air, I guided Asuna quickly through the market. Her pristine miniskirt and bared legs were just a bit too notable in this place.

“C’mon, let’s hurry,” I said, then noticed that the sound of her heels was growing distant, so I turned around and shouted, “Hey, what are you doing buying cart food?!”

The Flash was purchasing a dubious skewer of meat from an equally dubious cart. She took a bite and boldly pronounced, “Well, we only started poking at our salads when we left dinner…Hey, this is pretty good.”

As she chewed, she held out her other hand toward me, holding another skewer.

“Huh? For me?”

“That was the agreement, wasn’t it?”

“Oh…right…”

I automatically ducked my head as I accepted the meat, then realized that my free full-course meal had just been downgraded to a free skewer of meat. And the cost from that restaurant was automatically deducted from both of our accounts the moment we left the building.

As I chewed on mysterious, exotically spiced meat, I swore to myself that one day, I would get her to cook me a homemade meal.

We had just cleaned off the two skewers when we reached our destination. The skewer itself vanished into thin air as I wiped my perfectly clean hand on my leather coat and called out to draw the shopkeeper’s attention.

“Heya. I’m here.”

“I don’t give the usual welcoming routine to noncustomers,” Agil grunted, the sulky voice out of place on the shopkeeper-slash-ax-warrior’s massive, brawny figure. He motioned to another customer and said, “Sorry, closed for the day.”

He bowed politely and apologized as the customer complained, and once they were alone, he opened the shop-management window to set the business to closed status.

The chaotic, cramped display cases automatically shut themselves, and the front shutter clattered down as well. Agil turned to me at last.

“Listen, Kirito, when it comes to making a living as a merchant, number one is trust. Number two is also trust, and even with nothing at number three and number four, only by the time you get to number five do you reach ‘making easy money…’”

This rather baffling admonishment faded out as the bald shopkeeper caught sight of the player standing next to me. His whiskers shook as Asuna gave him a brilliant smile and bowed politely.

“It’s been a while, Agil. I’m sorry to bother you out of the blue like this. We need immediate help with this, I’m afraid…”

Agil’s grumpy features turned pleasant in an instant. He thumped his chest bracingly, told her he would handle it, and prepared some tea.

There’s just no way for a man to overcome his innate parameters, it seems.

Upstairs, once we had explained the incident, Agil’s jutting brow knotted and his eyes turned sharp.

“His HP ran out in the safe haven? And you’re certain it wasn’t a duel?” he rumbled in his deep baritone. I leaned forward in the rocking chair and nodded.

“I can’t imagine that no one would see the victory announcement, so it seems to be the natural conclusion now. Plus…even if it were a duel, there’s no way he would accept a duel when he was out getting dinner, especially a full-finish duel.”

“And if he was walking with that girl Yolko beforehand, it couldn’t possibly have been a sleep-PK,” Asuna added, swirling her mug over the small round table.

“Plus, the details are too complex for a spontaneous duel. I think we can assume that this was a preplanned PK. So that brings us…to this,” I said, opening my menu and manifesting the rope from my inventory, so that I could hand it to Agil.

Naturally, the knot that had been tied around the table leg was undone when I’d retrieved the rope, but the other end was still done into the large noose. Agil dangled the loop in front of his face, snorted with disgust, and tapped it.

He chose the “Appraisal” menu from the pop-up window. If Asuna or I had tried that, we’d just get a failure notice, since we lacked the proper skill level, but Agil the merchant would be able to learn more about it.

The large man looked over the window, which was visible only to him, and described the contents in his deep voice.

“I’m afraid this wasn’t player-made, just your garden variety NPC-sold rope. Not a high-ranking item. It’s got about half of the durability left.”

I replayed the horrible sight in my mind and nodded. “That figures. It was holding a guy in heavy armor; that had to be a considerable load to bear.”

But all the killer needed was for the rope to hold out the few dozen seconds necessary for the man to lose his remaining HP and explode into nothing.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting much from the rope to begin with. The real kicker is this one,” I said, tapping my still-open inventory to materialize another item.

The dark, gleaming spear and its heavy presence cast an eerie mood over the cramped room. As a weapon, it belonged to a rank far, far below those Asuna and I equipped, but that wasn’t the point. This spear was a murder weapon, a tool that had cruelly taken a player’s life.

I handed the spear to Agil, careful not to let it bump against anything. The entire weapon was made of a single black metal, a rarity for that category. It was about five feet long, with a foot-long grip, a long handle, and a sharp six-inch point at the end.

Its main feature was the rows of short, sharp barbs that ran along the entire length of the handle. They served to make it harder to remove the spear once it had stabbed its target. It therefore required very high strength to pull out.

In this case, strength referred to both the player’s numerical strength stat, and also the force of the brain’s mental signal being absorbed by the NerveGear. In that moment, Kains had been too gripped by the fear of death to produce a clear, crisp signal to move his body. He could hardly be blamed for not being able to move the spear.

That only strengthened my hunch that this was not a spontaneous PK but something premeditated, planned. There was nothing crueler than death by continuous piercing damage. He wasn’t felled by an opponent’s skill or superior weaponry—but by his own terror.

Agil brought me out of my thoughts as he finished examining it.

“It’s PC-made.”

Both Asuna and I suddenly bolted upright. “Really?!” I shouted.

If it were PC-made—crafted by a player with the Smithing skill—the name of that player would be listed there. And that spear was likely a one-off special-order weapon. If we could ask the crafter directly, there was a very good chance we’d learn who ordered and paid for it.

“Who made it?” Asuna prodded him. Agil looked down at the system window.

“Grimlock…Never heard of ’im. At any rate, it’s not top craftsmanship…Still, it’s not like regular players have never thought of boosting Smithing to craft their own weapons…”

If Agil the merchant didn’t know this crafter, then Asuna and I certainly wouldn’t. Silence fell on the cramped room again.

But it didn’t take long for Asuna to note, “We should still be able to track him down. I can’t imagine that a solo player would have gotten to the point of being able to craft a weapon of this type. If we ask around in the mid-level floors, we’re sure to find someone who’s been in a party with a ‘Grimlock’ before.”

“True. There aren’t many idiots like this guy,” Agil agreed. He and Asuna looked at me—the idiot.

“Wh-what? I join a party every now and then.”

“Only for boss fights,” she quipped. I had no rebuttal to that.

Asuna snorted and examined the spear in Agil’s hands again. “Based on this…I’m not sure if I really want to have a nice chat with Grimlock, even if we do find him…”

I had to agree. It must have been some unknown red player who commissioned and used this spear, not Grimlock the blacksmith. Killing someone in SAO with your own handcrafted weapon, where your name was permanently saved on it, would be like writing your own name on a knife you stabbed someone with in real life. On the other hand, any crafter with a certain amount of smarts and experience should recognize what a weapon like this was designed to do.

Piercing damage over time had a very limited effectiveness against monsters. That was because monsters were just a series of algorithms that felt no fear. If stuck with a piercing weapon, they would simply pull it out once they got the chance. And since no monster would thoughtfully hand back the weapon, it usually got tossed far away, irretrievable until the battle was over.

Which meant that this spear could only have been crafted for the purpose of PvP. All of the crafters I knew, at least, would have refused the job when they learned what it was for.

But this Grimlock had not.

It was very unlikely that this was the name of the killer himself—given how easy it was to pin down the name—but it was possible that this crafter was at least a person of loose morals or perhaps secretly affiliated with a red guild.

“…At any rate, we’re not likely to get an answer for free. If we’re forced to pay for the information…” I murmured. Agil shook his head, and Asuna fixed me with a piercing glare.

“We’ll split the cost.”

“…Fine. No turning back now,” I said, giving in. I turned to the shrewd merchant and asked, “I doubt it’ll be much of a clue, but I might as well ask what the name of the weapon is.”

The bald man considered the invisible window for a third time.

“It says it’s called…Guilty Thorn.”

“…Hmm.”

I looked at the barbs bristling out of the short spear’s handle again. Of course, the name was simply randomly generated by the game. So there couldn’t be any personal will behind those particular words.

But…

“Guilty…Thorn…”

Asuna’s whisper imbued the words with a chilly edge.