2

“Thank you for your concern. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take you up on your offer to guide us to the exit.”

Those had been the first words I heard from Keita, leader of the Moonlit Black Cats.

It had been a spring evening, about five months since the start of the game of Russian Roulette that was Sword Art Online, and I was romping around a labyrinth about ten floors below the current front line, collecting ingredients for a new weapon.

As a beater—a former beta-tester whose knowledge of the game allowed me to burst out of the gate, earn experience efficiently, and handle the toughest monsters on my own—the task was yawningly boring. I’d carefully avoided any other adventurers and reached my quota of items in just two hours. As I prepared to leave, I came across a party running the other direction as they were chased by a swarm of larger monsters.

Even a solo player like me could tell this was a poorly balanced party. Out of the five, only one man bearing a shield and mace was equipped to man the front line. The others were a thief with daggers, one person with a quarterstaff, and two spearmen. The one with the mace was losing HP, but without any partners to alternate with and block blows, it was all he could do to continue backing away from the enemy.

I looked at each of them in turn to check their HP. They had enough to make it to the exit, but if they pulled in another group of monsters along the way, there was no guarantee of their safety. After a moment of hesitation, I leaped out of the hidden pathway and called out to the man with the staff, who I gauged to be their leader.

“Want some help up there?”

He goggled wide-eyed at me for a moment but quickly acquiesced.

“Yes, please. If you feel in danger at any time, go ahead and run for it.”

I pulled the sword from my back and called out to the mace-wielder to switch, then forced my way to the front of the horde of monsters.

It was a pack of armed goblins, the same enemies I’d just been farming repeatedly for the past few hours. If I unleashed my sword skills, I could wipe them out in an instant, and even if I just stood there unresisting, my Battle Healing ability would ensure that I could take a hail of blows without danger for quite some time.

But for an instant, I felt fear—not of the goblins but of the watchful eyes of the people behind me.

Ordinarily speaking, it was poor form for a high-level player to strut around a lower hunting ground as though he owned the place. Do it for long enough, and someone would hire the big-time guilds to get rid of you, and after they’d hung you out to dry, you were placed on the “bad player” lists in the game’s newspapers. As this was an emergency, it seemed like my transgression could be overlooked, but I was still afraid of that moment when the gratitude in their eyes turned to disgust at a beater like me.

I limited my sword skills to the most basic I had, taking my time against the goblins. But I had no idea what a horrendous mistake this would lead to much, much later.

After a few potions for the mace-wielder and several switches, we’d defeated the band of goblins at last. I was surprised at the ferocity of the cheer that arose from the five strangers. They exchanged high fives and shared in the joy of victory.

On the inside I was uncomfortable, but I tried on an awkward smile and shook the hands they offered me. The last to approach was one of the spear-users, the sole woman of the group, her eyes filled with tears as she gripped my hand with both of hers. She shook my hand so hard her black hair shivered.

“Thank you…Thank you so much. I was so, so scared…It was amazing the way you saved us. Thank you.”

When I heard those words and saw the wavering tears, I felt an emotion that I still can’t put a name to today. All I can remember is that I was glad I’d saved them and glad I’d been strong enough to do so.

I’d been a solo player since the start of the game, but this wasn’t the first time I’d ever stepped in to help a party. Among advanced players, however, it was an unspoken rule to help one another when in need. They lived in dangerous circumstances where one might easily find oneself in need of assistance, so it wasn’t necessary to seek out thanks, and when offered, it was accepted with a curt nod and nothing more. After a brief post-fight readjustment, you silently headed off to the next battle. It was a purely logical system, suited to the sole purpose of being in that environment: strengthening oneself.

But these people, the Moonlit Black Cats, were different. They heartily celebrated this single victory and praised one another’s bravery. The scene might as well have been accompanied by a victory fanfare from a single-player RPG. Perhaps I was swayed by their camaraderie when I offered to guide them to the exit of the labyrinth. Perhaps I was struck by the sudden thought that maybe these people understood the concept of “conquering” this insane game better than anyone else playing it.

“I was running low on my stock of potions, too. Would you like me to accompany you to the exit?”

Keita’s face split into a wide grin at my bald-faced lie. “Thanks for your concern.”

No. Now that it’s been half a year since the Moonlit Black Cats were wiped out, I can be honest. I felt good. I’d built up my status for selfish reasons playing solo, and I had finally used that strength to help those who were weaker than me. I’d felt the pleasure of being needed—that was all.

After we left the labyrinth and returned to town, Keita offered to buy me a drink at a pub, which I accepted at once. Once we’d had a toast of wine—which had to be expensive for them—and finished our introductions, Keita pulled me aside and hesitantly inquired about my level in a low voice.

I’d been expecting this question. In preparation for it, I’d decided on a suitable number to tell him that wouldn’t give away my actual strength. I told him the number I suspected was about three levels higher than their average as a guild—and twenty lower than my actual total.

“Wow, you can actually solo that dungeon at your level?” he marveled. I looked sheepish.

“Well, all I’m really doing is sneaking around and looking for solitary monsters I can handle on my own. It’s actually not very efficient.”

“Oh…I see. Well, Kirito…this is kind of awkward to ask, but I just have a feeling that some other guild will come knocking at your door soon enough. Would you want to join our group?”

“What?” I pretended not to understand. Keita continued his pitch, the blood rushing to his round head.

“Well, level-wise, we’re actually able to handle that dungeon. The problem is our skill variety. As you saw earlier, Tetsuo’s the only one who can handle the front line. He doesn’t have time to recover all by himself, and we tend to wind up on our heels a lot. You’d be a huge help in that regard, and also…Hey, Sachi, c’mere!”

The woman Keita beckoned over was the small black-haired spear-wielder. The woman named Sachi came, wineglass in hand, and nodded to me shyly. Keita placed a hand atop her head as he explained.

“As you can tell, her weapon is a two-handed longspear, but her skill numbers are lower than our other spearman. So I want to switch her to a sword and shield now, while we have the chance. But it’s hard to find the time to train something like that, and she’s having trouble getting the hang of the sword. Do you think you might be able to coach her a bit?”

“Oh, don’t treat me like such a child!” Sachi retorted, then stuck out her tongue and laughed. “I always liked standing in the back and poking the bad guys with a long pole. It’s scary switching to the front and getting up close and personal!”

“How many times do I have to tell you, that’s why you get to hide behind the shield! Seriously, you’ve always been such a scaredy-cat.”

Until now, I’d lived a Spartan life on the frontier of SAO and was used to MMORPGs being nothing but a competition over limited resources. This friendly bickering was a pleasant and radiant scene to behold. When Keita noticed the way I was watching them, he chuckled and explained with a touch of embarrassment.

“See, all of us used to be in the same computer club in high school. She and I lived pretty close to each other, in fact…Oh, but don’t worry. They’re all really nice, and I’m sure you’ll fit in right away, Kirito.”

I’d already seen proof of their friendly nature on the trip out of the labyrinth. The fact that I was lying to them sent a prickle of guilt down my spine, but I smiled and nodded anyway.

“In that case…I guess I’m in. It’s nice to be here.”

The Moonlit Black Cats’ party balance was vastly improved just from adding a second fighter to the front rank.

If any of them had bothered to glance at my HP bar with just a smidgen of suspicion, they would have noticed that it mysteriously never seemed to diminish. But when I told my trusting guildmates that my coat was made of a special material—this, at least, was not a lie—they took it at face value.

When we fought as a party, I focused solely on defense, allowing the rear members to do the killing blows that gave them experience bonuses. Keita’s group was leveling quickly now, and just a week after I joined, we were hunting on the next floor up.

We were sitting in a circle in the dungeon’s safe haven, chowing down on Sachi’s homemade sandwiches, as Keita eagerly told me about his personal dreams.

“Of course, the safety of the group comes first…but if safety is all you want, we could be sitting on our hands back in the Town of Beginnings, right? I’m hoping that if we keep leveling up like this, eventually we’ll be good enough to join the clearers in advancing the game. Right now, top guilds like the Knights of the Blood and the Divine Dragon Alliance are doing all the heavy lifting up above. What do you suppose separates them from us, Kirito?”

“Umm…information, maybe? They seem to have a stranglehold on where the most efficient hunting grounds are and how to get the best weapons.”

This was a fact I’d learned from being one of those heavy lifters myself, but Keita wasn’t satisfied with that answer.

“Well…I’m sure that’s part of it. But I think it’s willpower. Like they have the strength of will not just to protect one another but all the players in the game. It’s that source of strength that helps them keep beating bosses, one after the other. We’re still on the side that’s being protected, but I think our will to help is just as strong as theirs. That’s why I think that if we keep trying our hardest, we’ll catch up to them someday.”

“I see…Let’s hope so.”

I reassured him, but inwardly, I knew it wasn’t anything so noble. The motivation that drove the clearers to be what they were was simple: the obsession with being the very strongest swordsman who stood atop all the thousands in the game. Consider this: If the clearers of SAO truly wanted to protect the entire gaming populace, they would take their hard-earned information and items and share them as evenly as possible with all the mid-level players. Doing so would both raise the floor of all players and vastly increase the number of fighters available to tackle the latest bosses.

The reason they didn’t share any of that was because they wanted to stay on top. I was no exception. At the time, I was slipping out of the inn late at night and teleporting to the latest floor to keep leveling up. Doing so only increased the level gap between the rest of the Moonlit Black Cats and me. I was betraying their trust, I knew it, and I kept doing it.

But at the time, I actually believed him a bit. I thought that just maybe, if I helped power-level the guild up to reach the top echelon of players, Keita and his ideals might just break through the closed circle of the clearers and change them for the better.

The Moonlit Black Cats’ advancement was truly startling. The places they were adventuring I’d conquered long before, so I knew the danger spots to avoid and the lucrative spots to hit. With my careful guidance through the ideal paths, the average level of the guild shot upward, well ahead of the pack. They’d been ten floors below the current front line when I met them, and in short order they’d closed that gap to five. The guild’s coffers were positively bulging, and the purchase of our own guild home was becoming a realistic goal.

The one thing that wasn’t going perfectly for the guild was the plan to turn Sachi into a shield-bearing swordswoman.

I couldn’t blame her for having trouble. More than statistical prowess, in order to tackle the challenge of close-range combat, you needed the steadfast courage to overcome the fear of SAO’s terrifying beasts. Many players had lost their lives just after the start of the game because they panicked in close combat. Sachi was the gentle and timid type, which made her particularly unsuited for that kind of battle.

I wasn’t in any particular rush to advance her training as a shield-user, knowing full well that I was powerful enough to be all the defense the group needed, but our guildmates did not agree. In fact, they seemed to be upset that despite being the new member, I was “forced” to take on much of the stressful front-line duty. Because the group was so close-knit, they didn’t speak their minds openly, but the pressure on Sachi was intensifying.

And then, one night, Sachi disappeared from the inn.

The inability to check her location in the guild registry was likely a sign that she was inside a labyrinth all by herself. Keita and the others flew into a panic and decided to go searching for her.

I was the only one who insisted on searching outside of the labyrinth. I told them there were a few places out in the wilderness that had similar cloaking qualities, but that was only a bluff. In fact, I was certain I could find her because I had the Track skill, a high-level offshoot of the Search skill, but I couldn’t let the others know that.

After they raced off toward the floor’s labyrinth, I stood in front of Sachi’s room and activated my Track skill, then followed the trail of light green footsteps that appeared.

To my surprise, the little footprints disappeared into a waterway on the outskirts of town. I peered inside, and amidst the echoing drips in the darkness, I saw Sachi, huddled in the corner beneath a concealing cloak she’d recently acquired.

“Sachi…”

Her shoulder-length hair draped over her face as she looked up, startled.

“Kirito…how did you know I’d be here?”

I paused, trying to think of an answer.

“Call it a hunch.”

“Oh…”

She smiled weakly, then placed her head back on top of her knees. I resumed my rapid contemplation, searching for the least suspicious words I could offer.

“Everyone’s worried about you. They went looking in the labyrinth. Let’s go back.”

She didn’t respond for quite a while. A minute passed, maybe two. Just as I was about to repeat myself, I heard her mutter, face still down.

“Will you run away with me, Kirito?”

“Run away? What from?” I asked automatically.

“From this town. From the Black Cats. From the monsters…From Sword Art Online.”

I didn’t know enough about girls—about people in general—to have an immediate answer for this. After another long period of thinking, I hesitantly asked a question.

“What, like…a suicide pact?”

After a moment of silence, Sachi let out a humorless chuckle.

“Ha-ha…Yeah, maybe…Sorry, no. If I had the guts to die, I wouldn’t be hiding in town like this. Sit down; don’t just stand there.”

Still unsure of what to do, I sat down on the cobblestones, slightly apart from Sachi. The lights of the town filtered faintly through the crescent-shaped waterway exit, like starlight.

“I’m scared to die. I’m so scared, I can barely sleep anymore,” she murmured. “Why did this happen to us? Why can’t we leave the game? If it’s just a game, why do we have to die when we lose? What does that Kayaba person stand to gain from this? What’s the meaning of it all…?”

I could have given a separate answer to each of these five questions. But even I knew that those weren’t the answers Sachi was asking for. I considered her words and found my voice.

“I don’t think there is a meaning…and no one’s getting anything. All the important things were finished from the moment this world was built.”

I’d told a horrible lie to the girl who sat next to me crying so hard the tears had stopped. I was getting something out of this—I was deriving pleasure from slipping into the Black Cats and hiding the truth of my own strength, of feeling superior to them.

I should have told her everything at that point. If I had even an ounce of sincerity in my body, I would have laid bare my own hideous ego right there and then. At the very least, that might have taken some of the pressure off Sachi—maybe even given her a little peace of mind.

Instead, I sold her pure fiction.

“…You’re not going to die.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The Black Cats are plenty strong as they are now. We’re well within the margin of safety. As long as you’re in this guild, you’ll be safe. And there’s no reason to force yourself to become a swordswoman.”

Sachi looked up at me, her eyes pleading. I turned away, unable to face her stare.

“Really…? You’re sure I won’t die? I’ll get back to my real life?”

“Yeah…you won’t die. Not before we beat this game and get out of here.”

They were the cheapest words I could have possibly said, without a shred of conviction or believability. But Sachi inched over to my side anyway, put her head on my shoulder, and cried.

A few minutes later, I sent a message to Keita’s group and escorted Sachi back to the inn. I sent her up to her room, then waited in the pub on the first floor for the group’s return. When they got back, I explained the situation to them: that it would take time to teach Sachi the shield, that she should remain a spear-fighter for now, that I wasn’t bothered at all by staying on the forward line.

They seemed to be a bit suspicious of whatever had happened between the two of us, but they graciously accepted my proposal. I was relieved at that, but it hadn’t actually addressed the fundamental problem, of course.

Starting the next night, Sachi came to lie in my bed and was finally able to sleep again. She claimed that lying next to me while I told her she wouldn’t die was the only way she could relax enough to sleep. This meant that I could no longer slip out late at night to farm more experience, but it didn’t ease the feeling of guilt over deceiving Sachi and her friends.

My memories of that time are as tightly packed as a snowball, and it’s difficult to recall the details. If there’s anything I can say, it’s that there was no romance between the two of us. We slept in the same bed, but there was no touching, no whispering words of love, no long stares into each other’s eyes.

We were like two alley cats finding solace in licking each other’s wounds. Hearing my words, Sachi was able to forget her fear, and by providing for her, I was able to assuage my guilt at being a dirty beater.

That’s right—by observing Sachi’s anguish, I think I was finally able to see the true nature of SAO. Until that point, I’d never truly felt the dread of knowing that this game could kill me. I’d blazed through the lower floors, mechanically slaying the monsters I’d known inside out since the beta test, then used that level buffer to maintain my place among the top clearers in the game. I was no Heathcliff, but thinking back on it, my HP bar had basically never fallen into the danger zone…

I’d been lounging atop a mountain of resources I’d won without any trouble, while countless players around me trembled in terror at the very real possibility of death. By facing and recognizing this injustice, I felt like I had finally found a way to assuage my own guilt: protecting Sachi and the rest of the Moonlit Black Cats.

I forced myself to forget that I’d joined their guild and concealed my level for the purpose of feeling better about myself, and I told myself that my lies were protecting them and raising them into a first-class guild. I was trying to change my own memory to support my ego. Every night, Sachi curled into a ball next to me, and I repeated, You won’t die; you won’t die; you will survive like a magic charm. When I did so, Sachi would look up at me underneath the blanket, smile just a little bit, and fall into a light sleep.

But Sachi died in the end.

Not even a month from that night in the underground sewer, she was cut down by monsters right before my eyes, her body and soul scattering into nothingness.

That day, Keita was off visiting a real-estate dealer to inquire about a one-story house to use as our guild base—we’d finally scraped together the amount we’d set as our goal. Sachi and I and the three other members sat around the inn waiting for Keita’s return, laughing at the miserable amount of col remaining in our shared guild inventory. Eventually, Tetsuo the macer spoke up with an idea.

“Hey, let’s go make some money in the labyrinth and buy a set of furniture for the new house. Keita’ll freak out when he sees it.”

We decided to go to the labyrinth just three floors below the current frontier, a dungeon we’d never visited as a group before. I’d been there before, of course, and I knew that it was a lucrative destination full of dangerous traps. But I didn’t tell them that.

Level-wise, we were relatively safe within the dungeon, and our hunting was fruitful. We raised our expected quota within an hour and were turning around to leave and shop for our furniture when the guild’s thief found a treasure chest.

I told him that we should ignore the chest. But when he asked why, I couldn’t tell him that I knew the traps were noticeably more dangerous on this floor. I only gave him a vague excuse, saying I got a bad feeling from it.

When he opened the chest anyway, an alarm trap clanged noisily, and monsters stormed through the three doorways into the room. I immediately sensed that we were in trouble and commanded everyone to use crystals to teleport out. But when it became apparent that we were also standing in an anti-crystal zone and there was no escape, the entire group fell into a panic—myself included.

The first to die was the thief who’d set off the trap. Next was Tetsuo the macer, then the spearman.

I was terrified, and I unleashed a storm of the high-level skills I’d been hiding this entire time, desperately trying to stem the tide of monsters. But there were too many. I didn’t even have enough time to turn around and destroy the ringing alarm that was summoning them.

Just as Sachi was about to be swallowed by the wave of monsters, she stretched out a hand and opened her mouth, as if to say something to me. All I saw in her eyes was a heartrending, pleading trust, the same light she shone on me every night.

I don’t remember how I survived. The next thing I knew, the storm of monsters and my four guildmates were gone. And even after all of that, my HP bar was barely less than halfway full.

I returned to the inn alone, my mind a blank slate.

Keita was sitting there waiting, the key to our new guild house on the table. He listened to my story—why the others died, why I survived—and when I was done, he looked at me with eyes devoid of all emotion and said just one thing. You’re a beater. You didn’t have the right to get involved with us.

He stood up and marched his way to the outer perimeter of Aincrad, and before my very eyes, he vaulted over the fence with no hesitation and flung himself into the infinite void.

Keita had spoken the absolute truth. There was no doubt that my pride, my arrogance, had killed the four—no, five—members of the Moonlit Black Cats. If I hadn’t gotten involved with them, they’d have stayed down in the safe middle zone. They’d never have rashly attempted to disarm a trap far beyond their means.

The key to survival in Sword Art Online isn’t reflexes, or stats, or weapons—it’s adequate knowledge. I’d given them a quick step up, an advanced course in power-leveling, but I didn’t give them information. That was a tragedy waiting to happen. I swore to Sachi that I’d protect her life, and I ended up killing her.

I needed to accept whatever word she was going to say in that final moment, even if it was the worst curse she could possibly hurl at me. That was the reason I clung to the slim possibility of that item of resurrection. I had to hear that word.