3

Silica slowly opened her eyes at the sound of the ringing chime in her ears. The morning alarm was only audible to her. It was seven o’clock AM.

She pushed the covers off and sat up. Silica was not a morning person, but she was in a surprisingly good mood today. Her mind felt cleansed and clear in the way that only a good, deep sleep could provide.

Yawning widely, she turned to step out of the bed, then stopped with a jolt.

The morning light streaming through the window illuminated a sleeping figure, seated on the ground with his top half propped up against the bed. She was about to scream, thinking it was an intruder, only to remember where she had fallen asleep last night.

I dozed off in Kirito’s room and never left…

With that realization, her face grew as hot as though a monster were blowing fire breath on it. Knowing the graphical engine of SAO tended to exaggerate facial emotions, she wouldn’t be surprised if actual steam was coming off of her. Kirito must have left her in the bed as she slept, then decided to take the floor instead. Silica covered her face with both hands and writhed in embarrassment and guilt.

After half a minute, she collected her thoughts and slipped out of the bed. Tiptoeing around to the other side, she bent down to look at him.

The dark swordsman’s sleeping face was so unexpectedly cherubic that Silica had to stifle a giggle. His hard glare made him seem much older when awake, but right now he didn’t look that far off from her own age.

It was fun to sit there spying on her oblivious prey, but Silica knew they had more important things to do and gently prodded his shoulder.

“Kirito, it’s morning.”

His eyes instantly snapped open, then blinked rapidly for several seconds as he stared at her. His dazed expression suddenly turned to alarm.

“Oh…s-sorry!” He bowed. “I was going to wake you up, but you were sleeping so peacefully. I tried to carry you back to your room, but the door was locked, so…”

The game ensured that it was impossible to break into a room rented out by another player, so if you weren’t on the guest’s friend list, there was no way to force your way inside. Silica hurriedly waved her hands.

“N-no, it’s my fault! I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have hogged your bed…”

“Don’t worry about it. You don’t wake up with aches and pains here, no matter how you fall asleep.” Kirito rose to his feet, cracking his neck in seeming contradiction to what he’d just said. He raised his hands and stretched, then looked down at Silica as though remembering something.

“Well, first off…good morning.”

“Oh! Good morning.”

Together, they laughed.

The pair went downstairs to eat a hearty breakfast in preparation for the Hill of Memories on the forty-seventh floor, then walked out into the bright sunlight of early morning. The daytime players who were just getting their daily adventures started and the nighttime players who were coming home from a long hunt crossed paths in the street with very different expressions.

They stocked up on potions and the like from the item shop next to the inn before heading for the teleport gate. Fortunately, they were able to get there without the pushy suitors from yesterday harassing them. Silica stopped short just before jumping into the glowing blue portal.

“Oh…I don’t know the name of the town on the forty-seventh floor…”

She was about to bring up her map to recall it when Kirito held out his hand.

“Don’t worry, I’ll lead the way.”

Hesitantly, she took his hand.

“Teleport: Floria!”

A bright light flashed and swallowed them both. After a momentary tugging sensation, the visual effect wore off, and Silica’s vision was filled with a different explosion of color.

“Wow!” she exclaimed with delight.

The teleport square of the forty-seventh floor was full of countless flowers. Narrow lanes in four directions framed the open space, and the rest of the curved plaza was walled off into large brick flowerbeds overflowing with an infinite array of unfamiliar flora.

“This is incredible…”

“Most people call this floor the Flower Garden. The whole forty-seventh floor is covered with flowers, not just the town. If you’ve got time, there’s even the Forest of Giant Flowers on the north edge.”

“Maybe some other time.”

Silica smiled at Kirito and bent over a nearby flowerbed. She stuck her face into a pale flower that resembled a bluebottle and breathed in its scent.

The flower was exquisitely rendered, with five delicately veined petals, white stamens, and a light green stalk.

Of course, not every flower in this very flowerbed was so lovingly detailed, to say nothing of the countless plants and buildings that existed throughout Aincrad. The system simply didn’t have the sheer resources required to handle so much detail, no matter how high-functioning the SAO mainframe was.

To avoid this overload but still provide its players with a feeling of realism, SAO employed a feature called the Detail Focusing System. If a player showed interest in an object and looked at it closely, the game would automatically adjust and render the object in finer detail.

When Silica had first heard about that capability, she actually held herself back from squinting at everything in sight, feeling guilty about causing extra stress on the system. But here, she was unable to stop herself, flitting from flower to flower like a bee, adoring each one in turn.

Once she’d had her fill of the sweet scent, Silica finally stood up and looked around the plaza again. Most of the people strolling the narrow paths among the flowerbeds were couples, hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm, chatting delightedly. So it was one of those spots. Silica snuck a glance at Kirito, who was standing idly at her side.

Do we look like the others? she thought, then felt her face explode with heat. Silica tried to hide her embarrassment with a rousing rallying cry.

“L-let’s head out into the fields, then!”

“Uh, sure.”

Kirito blinked once but quickly nodded and took off at her side.

Even past the teleport plaza, the streets of the town were filled with flowers. Silica thought about her meeting with Kirito yesterday as she strolled through the exploding color. It was impossible to think that it hadn’t even been a full day ago—that’s how important the black swordsman had become to her.

She threw a sidelong glance at him, wondering if he felt the same way, but his face was that same placid mask that defied any reading. Silica hesitated but eventually spoke.

“Um…do you mind if I ask about your sister, Kirito?”

“Wh-why her, all of a sudden?”

“Well, you said I reminded you of her. So I was curious…”

The topic of the real world was the greatest taboo in Aincrad, for several reasons. Primarily, there was the fear that if you reinforced the “falseness” of SAO by harkening to the real world, it might subconsciously loosen one’s grasp of the true finality of death in this world.

But even then, Silica still wanted to know about this sister she resembled. She wanted to know what he sought from her in return, whether it was to be a surrogate family member or not.

“Well…we weren’t really very close,” he eventually mumbled. “She’s actually not my sister, but my cousin. She was raised in our family from birth, for…certain reasons, but she probably doesn’t know the truth. Maybe that’s why I’ve always kind of kept my distance from her. I didn’t even like coming face-to-face with her at home.”

He sighed faintly.

“Plus, my grandfather’s the strict type. He forced the both of us to start taking kendo lessons at a nearby dojo when I was eight, but I could never get into it; I quit after two years. Well, I got a good whupping for that one…My sister cried her eyes out and stuck up for me, saying she’d practice hard enough for both of us. After that I got heavily into computers, and she really did stick with kendo—she was placing highly in national tournaments right before Grandpa died. He must have been happy about that…Anyway, I’ve always felt inferior to her since then. That just made me more self-conscious around her…and here I am now.”

Kirito stopped for a moment, then looked down at Silica.

“So maybe I helped you because I’m just satisfying my own needs. I guess I’m doing this out of the guilt I feel toward my sister. Sorry, I know it’s weird.”

Silica was an only child. She didn’t entirely understand the feelings Kirito mentioned, but she felt she could understand a bit of what his sister was going through, for some reason.

“I don’t think your sister blamed you for what happened. I mean, you can’t work that hard at something without enjoying it. She must really love kendo,” she said, trying to find the right words as she went along. Kirito grinned.

“All you do is cheer me up…Maybe you’re right. I hope you are.”

Silica felt the warmth in her chest begin to spread. She was delighted that he had opened up to her.

Eventually, they reached the southern gate of town. A silvery arch hung over the path, vines bursting with white flowers twined over the slender metal frame. The main street continued through it, into the green hills to the south before vanishing in the spring haze.

“Well…here’s where our adventure starts.”

“Yep.”

Silica let go of Kirito’s arm and pulled herself together before nodding.

“Between your level and that equipment, none of the monsters here should be unmanageable for you. But…”

He rummaged in the small pouch fixed to his belt, pulling out a sky-blue crystal and dropping it in Silica’s palm. It was a teleport crystal.

“You never know what might happen out there. If something unexpected occurs, and I tell you to get out of there, use this crystal to jump back to this town. Got that? Don’t worry about me.”

“B-but—”

“Just promise me that. I’ve…lost an entire party before. I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

Kirito’s face stayed hard, and Silica had no choice but to nod. He repeated his demand for a promise, then smiled to put her at ease.

“All right, let’s go!”

“Okay!”

Silica grabbed the dagger on her waist and swore inwardly that she wouldn’t panic like she had yesterday. She was going to use all of her strength to fight.

However…

“Aaaaagh! Wh-what is that?! It’s so creepy!!”

Just a few minutes after they’d headed south into the forty-seventh-floor wilderness, they had their first encounter with a monster.

“Eeeek! Get away from meee!”

A simple description for the unsettling thing that pushed its way through the tall grass might be a “walking flower.” Its dark green stem was as thick as a human arm, and the countless roots that split off from the base gripped the ground firmly. Atop the stem—or torso, if you wanted to call it that—was a huge yellow sunflower-like head with a gaping, toothy mouth in the middle, the interior a poisonous shade of red.

Two meaty-looking vines snaked out of the middle of the stem, suggesting that the monster attacked with its arms and mouth. The man-eating flower leered widely and lunged at Silica, brandishing its tentacle-like arms. Silica’s love of flowers only made her recoil harder in disgust at the delicate plant’s grotesque caricature.

“I said, go away!” She swung her dagger wildly, eyes mostly closed. Kirito’s exasperated assurance soon followed.

“Don’t worry, it’s super weak. Just aim for the whitish part right beneath the flower, and—”

“B-but it’s so grooooss!”

“You’re never going to last if you can’t handle this. Some monsters have multiple flowers, some are like giant flytraps, some have a million slimy tentacles…”

“Yeeeeek!!”

Kirito’s descriptions were giving Silica goose bumps. Her panicked sword skill was predictably, woefully inaccurate. In the momentary pause after she unleashed the skill, the flower slipped in close, wrapping its two vines around her legs and lifting her up into the air with surprising strength.

“Wu-hah!”

Silica’s vision spun upside down, and the system’s virtual gravity callously did its work, sliding her skirt downward over her belly.

“Gwaaaa!”

She shrieked, extending her left hand to hold the skirt in place while she swiped out with the right, trying to sever the vine. Her unfamiliar position made that difficult. Face red with frustration, Silica finally shrieked for assistance.

“H-help me, Kirito! Don’t look, but help me!”

“That’s…kind of impossible,” he murmured, covering his eyes with one hand. The giant flower shook her left and right in apparent entertainment.

“W-would you…just…knock it off?!”

Silica removed her hand from her skirt to grab the vine, then severed it with a slash. She felt herself fall, but the flower’s neck was now in range, so she tried another sword skill. It struck true this time, and the giant flower head rolled away before the entire creature exploded. Silica plopped to the ground amid the flying polygons, then turned to Kirito.

“…Did you see them?”

The swordsman in black peeked at Silica through his fingers.

“…No, ma’am.”

After another five encounters, Silica was getting used to the appearance of the monsters, and their progress was much faster. She did think she was going to pass out when the urchin-like monster slimed her from head to toe with its tentacles, though.

For the most part, Kirito stayed out of the battles, only stepping in to deflect blows with his sword when Silica was in trouble. Experience was awarded in proportion to the damage dealt when fighting with a party. By fighting these high-level monsters and doing nearly all the work, Silica was gaining EXP at a rapid rate, and she had already leveled up once.

A ways down the red brick path, they came to a little bridge over a running brook. On the other side of the bridge was a much larger hill than the others, and the path wound up it to the top.

“That’s the Hill of Memories.”

“It doesn’t seem to have any branching paths from here, does it?”

“Nope. Just one straight trail all the way to the top, but they say you have to fight a considerable number of monsters. Let’s be cautious.”

“Got it!”

Soon. Soon Pina would be alive again. Her pace quickened.

As Kirito warned, the encounter rate rose rapidly as they made their way through the wildly colored flowers up the hill. The plantlike monsters were bigger than before, but the black dagger that Kirito gave Silica was stronger than it looked, and one good combination attack was enough to take down most of their foes.

Speaking of surprises, Kirito also proved to be far more powerful than she’d realized.

She knew that he was at a high level when she first saw him dispatch two Drunk Apes with a single blow, but they were now twelve floors higher in Aincrad and he still wasn’t breaking a sweat. When they ran across multiple monsters, he would leave one and blast the others, returning to supervise Silica seconds later.

But the stronger he proved to be, the more suspicious she became. What had such a powerful swordsman been doing down on the thirty-fifth floor? He made it sound like he had some business in the Forest of Wandering, but she’d never heard of any particularly rare items or monsters emerging from its shadows. She vowed to ask him when this adventure was over.

The incline grew steeper as they made their way up the hill. They fought off ever-fiercer foes and wound their way through a copse of tall trees to see the top of the hill ahead.

“Wowww…”

Without thinking, she rushed forward several steps and raised a joyous shout.

It was like a field of flowers in the sky. Trees surrounded the vicinity, but the entirety of the open space was completely full of beautiful flowers.

“We finally made it, huh,” Kirito said as he approached from the rear, sheathing his sword in the scabbard on his back.

“And is this where…the special flower is…?”

“Yeah. There’s a big rock in the middle somewhere, and the flower’s on top of—”

Silica took off running before he could finish. Sure enough, she could see a shining white boulder in the center of the field. When she reached the chest-high rock, her breath ragged, she peered over to see what was on top.

“Huh…?”

There was nothing there. A few small blades of grass peppered the hollowed-out top of the rock like strings, but there was no flower to be seen.

“It’s not here…Kirito, there’s nothing here!” she called out to him as he reached the rock. The tears came welling up again, unstoppable.

“That can’t be right…There, see?”

Silica followed his glance back to the rock to see…

“Ah.”

A new bud was stretching upward from the tender grass even now. The focus system kicked in at her gaze, and the bud sharpened into much finer detail. Two pure white leaves opened like a clam, and a thin, sharp stem sprouted out from between them.

The plant grew thicker and taller before her eyes like a time-lapse video she once watched in science class, and eventually a large bulb formed at the end. Bizarrely enough, the sparkling white tear-shaped bulb was emitting a crimson light from within.

As Silica and Kirito held their breaths, the tip of the growth bulged—and with the chime of a bell, it popped open. Motes of light danced in the air.

The two were frozen still for a moment, content to gaze upon the tiny white flower, a delicate miracle unfolding before their eyes. Seven thin petals opened like starlight, and the gentle glow from within the flower spilled out, to melt into the air.

Silica looked up at Kirito, unsure if she should really touch such a beautiful thing. He flashed her an encouraging smile and nodded slowly.

She returned the gesture and reached out to the flower. The instant she touched the threadlike stalk, it crumbled as if made of the thinnest ice, leaving only the glowing flower in her palm. Holding her breath, she traced the surface with a finger. Silently, the info window popped open: PNEUMA FLOWER.

“With this…I can bring back Pina…”

“Yep. You just have to sprinkle the dew that builds up inside the flower onto the heart item. But there are lots of tough monsters around here, so we should probably head back to town before that. Just a bit more patience, and we’ll be back before you know it. Let’s go!”

“Okay!”

She opened her inventory and placed the flower on top. Once it had shown up in the list, she closed the window.

Silica was dying to use the teleport crystal to return instantly, but she stifled her impatience and started walking. That crystal was exorbitantly expensive and for emergencies only.

Fortunately, they met far fewer monsters on the return trip. Combined with the increased pace of the downward slope, they were back at the foot of the hill in no time at all.

Another hour on the road to town, and I’ll see Pina again…

But just as she was crossing the bridge over the brook for the second time, her heart leaping in her chest, Kirito’s hand came down on her shoulder from behind. She turned around with a start to see a stern glare on his face, pointed toward the grove of trees surrounding the path on the other side of the bridge. He called out a command in a low, menacing voice.

“Whoever’s lying in wait over there, show yourself.”

“Huh…?”

Silica hurriedly focused on the grove, but she couldn’t see anyone. After a few tense seconds, the leaves rustled. A player cursor sprang into being—green, so it wasn’t a criminal.

To her shock, Silica recognized the figure that appeared.

Hair as red as fire, lips the same shade, black leather armor that gleamed like enamel, and a thin cross-shaped spear in her hand—

“R…Rosalia? What’re you doing here?!”

Rosalia ignored Silica’s bewilderment and simply smirked.

“Your Search skill must be pretty impressive to see through my Hiding attempt, swordsman. Have I underestimated you?”

It was then that she at last turned to Silica.

“I’m guessing that you succeeded in procuring the Pneuma Flower, Silica. Congratulations.”

Silica took several steps backward, suspicious of Rosalia’s motive. She had a bad feeling about this, and a second later, that fear was confirmed.

“And now, I need you to hand over that flower.”

“Wh…what for…?”

Now Kirito stepped forward to speak again. “That’s not going to happen, Rosalia. Or perhaps I should refer to you by your proper title: leader of the orange guild, Titan’s Hand.”

Her eyebrows shot upward and the smirk disappeared.

In SAO, players who the system recognized as committing certain crimes—theft, assault, murder—were branded with an orange player cursor rather than green. Because of that, criminals were called “orange players” and their guilds “orange guilds.” Silica was aware of this, but she’d never actually seen one for herself.

“Huh…? But…her cursor is…green…”

“Not everyone in an orange guild is actually orange. The green members identify their marks in town, slip into parties, then guide the victims to an ambush point. Our eavesdropper last night was one of her friends.”

“But…oh my God…”

Silica looked at Rosalia, stunned.

“Th-then…the entire two weeks you were in our party, it was just…”

Rosalia flashed that venomous smile again.

“That’s right. I was gauging the strength of the party, waiting for you to fatten your purses with more gold for the taking. Today was supposed to be my collection day, but”—she licked her lips—“I had to change my plans when the most promising part of the group dropped out, didn’t I? And it seems I made the right call. The Pneuma Flower’s quite a rare item, and demand is high. Good intelligence is worth its weight in gold!”

She stopped there, looking at Kirito, and shrugged.

“And knowing all that, you still went along with her little act. Are you really that dense? Or did she tempt you with that sweet young body?”

Silica saw red rage at Rosalia’s insult. She was about to draw her dagger when Kirito grabbed her shoulder.

“Neither.” He was still calm. “I’ve been looking for you, Rosalia.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Ten days ago, you attacked the Silver Flags guild on the thirty-eighth floor. Four of them were killed; only the leader escaped.”

“Oh…that penniless lot.” She didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

“Well, their leader hung around the teleport gate on the latest floor, tearfully begging anyone who came by to help him get revenge.”

Kirito’s voice was cold now, a sharpened blade of ice that threatened to cut anything it touched.

“But when I decided to take up his request, he didn’t ask me to kill you. He wanted me to put you and your cohorts into the jail beneath Blackiron Palace. Can you understand what he’s going through?”

“Not really,” Rosalia said, uninterested. “What are you getting so worked up about, anyway? It’s pathetic. There’s no proof that the people you kill here are actually dead. Even if it’s true, they can’t try us in court when we get back. And don’t get me started on how silly it is to preach about justice and laws when we don’t even know if we can get back. People like you are the worst—the ones who bring all their logic with them into a world like this.”

Her eyes flashed menacingly.

“So you took that weakling at his word and tracked us down, did you? You must not have anything better to do. Well, I’ll admit that I took your bait…but what do you think you’re going to accomplish, just the two of you?”

A sadistic leer spread across her lips. Twice, she waved her extended finger high in the air.

The next instant, the overgrowth at the sides of the path beyond the bridge rustled wildly as numerous figures emerged from hiding. Several cursors popped into Silica’s view. Nearly all of them were glowing a malevolent orange. There were ten in all. If Kirito hadn’t noticed the ambush, she would have skipped right over the bridge and into their trap. The only other green cursor among all that orange belonged to a man with the exact same spiky hair she’d seen vanishing around the corner of the inn hallway the previous night.

The ten new bandits were all men wearing outlandish clothes. They clinked and jangled with a variety of silver accessories. Most unpleasant of all, they were leering at Silica, their gazes lingering on her body.

Silica hid behind Kirito’s coat, trying to swallow her disgust. She whispered to him, “There are too many of them, Kirito. We should teleport!”

“It’s all right. Keep your crystal ready, but don’t use it until I give the command,” he said calmly, patted her on the head, then started walking across the bridge. Silica could only stand there. It was crazy. He was going to get himself killed.

“Kirito!” she shouted after him. The sound rang out across the field.

“Kirito?” muttered one of the bandits. He stopped smiling, his brows crinkling together as he looked around, trying to recall a fragment of information. “That outfit…a one-handed sword with no shield…the Black Swordsman?”

The man’s face turned pale and he scrambled backward several steps.

“I-I-I don’t think this is such a good idea, Rosalia. He’s a beater…one of the old beta testers, and a front-line clearer, to boot…”

The rest of the group froze at that. Silica was just as shocked. She could only stare out at Kirito’s back, which was hardly very big.

She’d had a suspicion from their fights that he was a very high-level player. But she could never have dreamed that he was a “clearer,” one of the top swordsmen or women in the game who took it upon themselves to venture into unexplored labyrinths and beat boss monsters to advance the progress of the game. But she’d heard that clearers only used their strength to push the front line forward and were almost never seen on the mid-level floors…

Rosalia looked as stunned as the others, openmouthed for several seconds, before recovering and shrieking, “A clearer would never waste his time down here! He’s just another one of those cosplay idiots who thinks he can scare us by dressing up as someone more powerful! And even if he is the Black Swordsman, what can one man do against all of us?!”

Emboldened by her argument, the large ax-wielder at the head of the orange players bellowed.

“Th-that’s right! If he’s a clearer, it means he’s got tons of money and items! It just means he’s an even juicier target!”

The rest of the bandits echoed his sentiments, drawing their weapons. The numerous blades glinted wickedly.

“We can’t do this, Kirito…we’ve got to run!” Silica pleaded, squeezing her crystal. Rosalia was right; no matter how tough Kirito was, he couldn’t beat a dozen opponents. But he didn’t budge. He didn’t even draw his sword.

Taking that as a sign of resignation, the nine orange players aside from Rosalia and the spiky-haired man plunged forward, screeching war cries. Their boots pounded on the bridge.

“Raaah!”

“Dieeee!!”

They formed a semicircle around the motionless Kirito, hacking and jabbing his body with their swords and spears all at once. He wobbled and lurched with the impact of nine weapons.

“Noooo!” Silica screamed, covering her face with her hands. “Stop! Stop it! He…he’s going to die!!”

But of course the men were deaf to her pleas.

They were drunk with violence, some laughing maniacally, some jeering insults, but they all continued raining down blows on Kirito. Even Rosalia, who had walked up to the middle of the bridge, wore a look of unbridled glee, sucking on her finger as she took in the slaughter.

Silica wiped her tears and gripped the hilt of her dagger. She knew that jumping into the fight would do absolutely nothing, but she couldn’t watch it any longer. But just as she was about to leap forward, she noticed something and pulled up short.

Kirito’s HP bar hadn’t moved a bit.

No, that wasn’t quite accurate. The ceaseless blows were doing damage, but only a few tiny pixels were coming off his bar, and every few seconds, it would shoot back to full again.

Eventually, the bandits realized that their assault was having no effect and stopped, confused.

“What are you doing? Hurry up and kill him!”

At Rosalia’s irritated order, the rain of blows began anew, but again there was no apparent effect.

“Wh…what’s going on with this guy…?”

One of the bandits stumbled backward, his face twisted at the sight of something unnatural. The hesitation spread, and the other eight eventually stopped attacking and kept their distance.

A silence fell upon the bridge. At the center of it, Kirito slowly raised his head. His voice was soft.

“Four hundred points in ten seconds—that’s the total damage the nine of you combined to inflict on me. My level is seventy-eight, and I have fourteen thousand, five hundred hit points. With my Battle Recovery skill, I automatically regain six hundred points every ten seconds. You could attack me for hours and never win.”

The men looked on in stunned silence. Finally, the greatsword-wielder who seemed to lead the rest of them spoke, voice gravelly.

“That…that can’t be possible…It’s crazy…”

“Exactly,” Kirito spat in reply. “But all it takes is an increase in certain numbers to make the crazy possible. That’s the inherent unfairness of level-based MMOs at work!”

His voice, dark with some barely contained emotion, caused the men to falter. The looks on their faces went from shock to fear.

“Tsk!” Rosalia clicked her tongue and grabbed a teleport crystal from her waist. She held it high and said, “Teleport—”

But before she could finish, the air rippled audibly, and Kirito was standing right next to her.

“Aaah!”

He snatched the crystal out of her tensed fingers, grabbed her collar, and started dragging her back to the other side of the bridge.

“L-let me go! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

Kirito silently tossed Rosalia into the midst of the frozen men, then jammed his hand into the pouch on his waist. He pulled out a blue crystal, but it was a much deeper color than the blue of a teleport crystal.

“This is a corridor crystal, which took all the money my client had. It’s set to exit into the prison of Blackiron Palace. You’re all going to jail. The Army will see to you once you’re there.”

Rosalia bit her lip for several seconds, then spoke up, a confident smirk on her red lips.

“And if I say no?”

“I’ll kill every last one of you.”

Her smile froze.

“At least, I’d want to…but in reality, I’ll have to use this.”

Kirito pulled a small dagger out from under his cloak. On closer look, it seemed to be coated in some light green substance.

“It’s a paralysis poison. Level 5, so you won’t be moving for quite some time. It’ll certainly last long enough for me to toss every one of you into the corridor. So there’s your choice: walk in on your own or get thrown in.”

There was no bravado left in the group. They hung their heads silently, so Kirito put the dagger away and held up the deep blue crystal.

“Corridor open!”

The crystal shattered and a vortex of blue light appeared.

“Damn it…”

The tall ax-wielder slumped his shoulders and stepped in first. The remaining orange players followed him, some spitting a final curse before they went. The green eavesdropper walked in as well, leaving only Rosalia behind.

The redheaded thief still boldly refused to budge, even after all of her companions had disappeared into the portal. She sat cross-legged, glaring up at Kirito defiantly.

“If you’re going to do it, do it. But if you attack a green player, you’ll be oran—”

Before she could finish, Kirito grabbed her by the collar again.

“I’m a solo player, you know. One or two days of being orange means nothing to me.”

And he yanked her up, dragging her toward the gate. Now Rosalia was struggling, flapping her limbs in vain.

“W-wait, stop, stop! Forgive me! Please! I…I know—why don’t we team up? With your skill, we could take down any guild—”

But she never had the chance to finish. Kirito shoved her headfirst into the corridor, and a few moments after she disappeared, the corridor flashed brighter and winked out of existence.

A lonely quiet arrived in their wake.

The birds twittered and streams burbled as though the raucous confrontation had never happened. But Silica couldn’t move. She was filled with conflicting emotions—the shock at Kirito’s identity, the relief that the bandits were gone—and she just couldn’t open her mouth.

Kirito turned to look at her for several silent moments, then spoke in barely more than a whisper.

“I’m sorry, Silica. I used you like bait. I was thinking of telling you the truth about me…but I thought you’d be frightened.”

Silica could only shake her head in vigorous denial. A whirlwind of conflicting feelings was tearing up her insides.

“I’ll take you back to town,” he said, starting over the bridge. She called out to his back.

“I…I can’t walk.”

He turned around, laughing lightly, and offered a hand. Only when she squeezed it back did Silica find the strength to smile again.

They were silent nearly the entire way back to the Weathervane on the thirty-fifth floor. She had plenty of things to say, but Silica felt like her throat was stuffed with tiny pebbles.

When they reached Kirito’s room on the second floor, the sun through the window was already red with dusk. When she gazed upon his silhouette, black against the sunset, she finally summoned a trembling voice.

“Are you really…going to leave, Kirito?”

There was silence. Eventually, the silhouette nodded.

“Yes…I’ve been away from the front line for five days now. I have to return to clearing the game…”

“Right…of course…”

What she really wanted to say was, Take me with you!

But she couldn’t.

Kirito’s level was 78. She was level 45. That was a 33-level gap. The distance that separated them was cruelly stark. If Kirito took her to where he was fighting, she’d be slaughtered by the first monster they met. The wall that separated them in this game was taller and thicker than any found in the real world.

“…I…”

Silica bit her lip, trying desperately to hold back the emotions that threatened to burst out of her. That turned into a pair of tears that trailed down her cheeks.

Suddenly, she felt Kirito’s hands on her shoulders. He whispered to her, calm and low.

“Level is just a number. The strength we gain here is only an illusion, Silica. There are things much more important to be found. The next time we meet, it’ll be in the real world. We can be friends again there.”

She wanted to throw herself against the black swordsman’s chest. Yet Kirito’s calming words soothed the painful wrenching of her heart somewhat. She told herself that she wouldn’t ask for any more than this, and she closed her eyes.

“Yes. I’m sure we will—I’m sure we will.”

She stepped back, looked up at him, and was finally able to give him a smile with all of her heart. He grinned in return and said, “C’mon, let’s bring Pina back.”

“Finally!”

Silica nodded and waved open her main window. She scrolled through her inventory, found Pina’s Heart, and materialized it.

After placing the pale blue feather on top of the table, she produced the Pneuma Flower.

Crimson flower in hand, Silica looked up to Kirito.

“Just sprinkle the dew inside the flower, onto the feather. That will bring Pina back.”

“Got it…”

She gazed at the long blue feather and gave a silent speech.

Pina…there are so, so many things to tell you. About my incredible adventure…and the man who saved me—my big brother for a day.

And with tears in her eyes, Silica tilted the flower over the feather.

(The End)