14

“Wh-what’s up with this outfit?”

“Seems pretty self-explanatory to me. Now stand up!”

Asuna had forced me into a new set of clothes. It was the same shape as my comfy, tattered old coat, but this one was pure, eye-watering white. There were two small red crosses on both sides of the collar to go with the large one on the back. It was my new Knights of the Blood uniform, as if that needed any explanation.

“I thought I asked for something a little less…striking.”

“Trust me, that’s one of our plainest designs. It looks good on you!”

I sank into the rocking chair, defeated. We were upstairs at Agil’s, as usual. I’d claimed the space for my emergency shelter, and the poor shopkeeper was forced to sleep in a simple bed downstairs. The only reason he didn’t kick me out was that Asuna had come to help with the shop for the last two days. She made for an effective marketing tool.

As I groaned in the rocking chair, Asuna sat upon her familiar perch, the armrest. She rocked the chair back and forth, smiling at my stupid new outfit. After a few moments, she clasped her hands together as if remembering something.

“Oh, I guess I never gave you my official greeting. Welcome to our guild, recruit.” She gave me a nod, and I straightened up in a hurry.

“Nice to ‘meet’ you, I guess. The only problem is…I’m just a rookie, and you’re the vice commander.” I extended my hand and traced a finger along her back. “So I won’t be able to do that anymore.”

“Hyack!”

She leaped up with a shriek, smacked her new recruit on the head, then sat in the chair on the other side of the room, her cheeks puffed out.

It was early afternoon in late fall. A calm silence fell upon the lazy sunlight.

Two days had passed since my defeat at Heathcliff’s hands. Just as he had demanded, I was now a member of the KoB. It wasn’t to my liking to raise a fuss at this point. They gave me two days to prepare, and the next day I would report to guild HQ and begin my duty clearing the seventy-fifth-floor labyrinth.

A guild…

Asuna detected my brief sigh and glanced at me.

“Looks like you’re stuck with us…”

“It was good timing for me. I was hitting the limit of what I could do solo.”

“Well, it’s good of you to say so…Hey, Kirito.”

Her hazel eyes looked straight into mine.

“Tell me, why do you avoid guilds…and people in general? It’s not just because you were a beta tester or that you have a Unique Skill. You’re too nice to do this.”

I looked away and rocked the chair slowly.

“…Once, a long while back—more than a year ago, I think—I was actually in another guild…”

It surprised me how easily the words came. I had a feeling that Asuna’s kind gaze would heal the pain that surfaced every time I let that memory rise to the surface.

“I happened across some folks in a labyrinth and rescued them from trouble, which earned me an invitation to their guild. It was really small—just six members, including me. Their name was brilliant: the Moonlit Black Cats.”

She giggled.

“The leader was a really good guy. He always thought of the members first, and we all trusted him. He was Keita, a staff-wielder. Most of the others used two-handed, longer-range weapons, so they needed someone to take the forward position and keep enemies occupied.”

To be honest, their levels were considerably lower than mine. That was more a reflection of how obsessively I’d been working at it than a knock on their abilities.

If I’d told them my actual level, Keita would likely have revoked his offer. But at the time I’d been growing weary of solo dungeon-delving, and the comfortable atmosphere of the Moonlit Black Cats was welcoming. They were all friends in real life, and I couldn’t help but be drawn in by the way they interacted without any of the distance that was often endemic to net games.

When I chose to ignore everyone else and focus on improving my own level, I lost the right to seek the warmth of companionship, whispered the little voice in my ear. I had to suppress that dark voice and accept their offer, hiding my level and my beta experience.

Keita wanted to convert one of the guild’s two lancers to a sword-and-shield fighter, and he asked me to help coach that process. That way, we’d have three people at forward, including me, which would balance our party.

I was put in charge of Sachi, a gentle girl with black hair falling to her shoulders. When we first met, she laughed shyly and said that she’d been playing online games for a while but had a hard time making friends. Most days that the guild wasn’t doing activities together, I was giving her one-on-one sword lessons.

Sachi and I were alike in many ways. We had the tendency to create walls around ourselves, but despite our reticence, we both craved the presence of others.

One day, out of the blue, she spilled her innermost secrets to me. She was afraid to die. She was terrified of the game. She didn’t want to venture out into the wilderness at all.

All I could do was tell her that she wouldn’t die. I’d been hiding my true level from her the entire time—I didn’t have the right to say anything more. But when Sachi heard those words, she cried, and then smiled.

Some time later, the five of us, aside from Keita, decided to venture into a labyrinth. He was back in town, negotiating with the money we’d earned to buy a house that would serve as our headquarters.

The labyrinth had already been beaten, but there were still unmapped areas for us to explore. Just as we were preparing to leave, someone found a treasure chest. I recommended that we leave it behind. It was a high-level area on a floor close to the front line, and the party’s Disarm skill wasn’t up to snuff. But only Sachi and I were dissenting voices, and the other three overruled us.

The chest was trapped: an alarm trap, one of the worst of the wide variety that existed in SAO. A shrill alarm sounded from the chest, and countless monsters poured through every doorway into the room. Naturally, we chose the safe option and attempted to make an emergency teleportation.

But the trap was twofold. It was an anti-crystal zone—we couldn’t teleport out.

There were too many monsters for me to protect everyone. The other members panicked and started to run. I used my best skills, the ones I’d been keeping secret, desperate to find us a way out. But the others were in a state of sheer terror and couldn’t take advantage of my diversion. One by one, they ran out of health and shattered into pieces and screams. I kept swinging desperately, trying to keep Sachi alive, if nothing else.

But I was too late. A monster’s blade cut her down mercilessly as she lunged for my help, her hand outstretched. Up until the very instant she disintegrated like a delicate glass sculpture, her eyes were full of nothing but faith in me. She trusted me and clung to me. To my words—groundless, meaningless, proven false at the very end.

Keita was standing in front of our old headquarters, key to our new residence in hand, waiting for the group to return. When I came back alone and explained what had happened, he listened in silence. When I finished, he asked, “Why were you the only survivor?”

I had to tell him the truth: that I was a much higher level and had been a beta tester.

Keita gave me the emotionless look that one gives something alien and said just one thing.

You’re a beater. You didn’t have the right to get involved with us.

Those words cut me deeper than any steely sword.

“And what…happened to him…?”

“He killed himself.”

Her body jolted still in the chair.

“Threw himself off the outer edge. Probably cursed my name to the very…end…”

My voice caught. I’d tried to seal that memory away in a place where I could never revisit it again, but speaking it aloud brought the pain back as fresh as when it happened. I clenched my teeth. Asuna reached out a hand. I wanted to seek her salvation, but a voice in my heart told me I didn’t deserve it. My hands balled into fists.

“I was responsible for murdering all of them. If I hadn’t hid the fact that I was a beater, they would have believed me when I warned them about the trap. I killed Keita…I killed Sachi…”

I forced my eyes open and squeezed the words out through gritted teeth.

Asuna rose, came two steps forward, then took my face in her hands. She bore a gentle smile and leaned in very close.

“I’m not going to die.” It was like a whisper, but her voice was clear. All the tension drained out of my body. “After all…I’m the one protecting you.”

And she held my head to her chest. I was enveloped in soft, warm darkness.

I closed my eyelids and saw, beyond the black veil of memory, the members of the Moonlit Black Cats looking at me, seated at the counter of the old bar, the room brimming with orange light.

My day of forgiveness would never come. I could never repay what I had done.

But in my memory, their faces seemed to be smiling at me.

The next morning, I slipped my arms through my fancy new white coat and left for Grandzam with Asuna.

Today was my first day of activity as a Knight of the Blood. But while they normally worked in parties of five, Asuna had pulled some strings as vice commander and gotten us the privilege of making our own two-man party, so it was really no different from what we’d been doing before.

But when we reached guild headquarters, the orders I got were not what I was expecting.

“Training…?”

“Correct. We will form a party of four, including me, and clear the labyrinth of the fifty-fifth floor, finishing up in the town on the fifty-sixth.”

This was one of the four men I’d seen seated at the table during my last visit to this building. He was a large, curly-haired man who was apparently an ax warrior.

“But Godfrey! Kirito-kun’s working with me…”

Asuna tried to butt in, but he simply raised an eyebrow and proceeded imperiously.

“You might be the vice commander, but you cannot simply run roughshod over the regulations of the guild. If that’s the party you desire when we are actually performing game-clearing duties, so be it. But as the leader of the forward line, I need to assess his ability. Just because he has a Unique Skill does not necessarily mean he will be useful.”

“W-well, Kirito-kun’s strong enough that he wouldn’t have any trouble dealing with you…”

I spoke up before Asuna could completely blow her cool. “If you want to see what I can do, that’s fine with me. I just don’t want to waste my time on such a low-level labyrinth. I trust you don’t mind if we blaze through it in no time?”

The man named Godfrey frowned with displeasure, told me to be at the west gate of the town in thirty minutes, then plodded off.

“What was that all about?!” Asuna stormed, kicking a nearby pole. “I’m sorry, Kirito-kun…I knew we should have just run off on our own.”

“Yeah, but then your guildmates would have cursed me to the ends of the earth.” I smiled and patted her on top of the head.

“Aww…I thought we’d actually be together today. Maybe I should tag along…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back in a jiffy. Just wait for me here.”

“Okay. Be careful out there…”

I waved to her as she looked on solemnly, then I left the building.

But for as much as the day’s activity caught me by surprise, nothing prepared me for what I saw at the west gate of Grandzam.

There, waiting right next to Godfrey, was the last man in Aincrad I wanted to see—Kuradeel.