Yimi's Storage Space came from a Spatial Ring she had eaten. Once she swallowed it, the storage that had originally belonged to some outside object became her own. Inside that cramped little square of space she kept her belongings; she could feel exactly where each one sat, and whenever she wanted one, she simply took it out.
SAO's Inventory, by contrast, was a vertical column of text designed so it wouldn't block a player's view. A lot of the words and phrases on it meant nothing to Yimi—games like this always loved slapping weird names on everything to sound impressive.
She pulled out one of SAO's most vital items, a Teleport Crystal, and stared in puzzlement at the crystal that had appeared in her hand. Then she opened her mouth and gave it a light bite.
"Rosalia, don't move—" The boy who said it was trembling himself.
He had meant to soothe her while he looked for an opening, but looking for an opening meant thinking, and the deeper he thought, the deeper his terror ran—until, before he even realized what he was doing, he had already bolted through the side door and was sprinting away.
It had gone beyond anything he could comprehend, and the sheer terror was enough to blot out how adorable the little girl looked.
Nobody dragged into this death game had any sense of safety left.
By some quirk of the brain, they still couldn't stand going without meals on schedule, and every day they had to sleep just the same. Food and lodging naturally weren't free, so even the players who wanted nothing to do with risking their lives on the front lines couldn't simply check out and rot.
It was like being a modern person of the twenty-first century suddenly dropped into a world where death could come at any moment. In a situation like that, the only thing that could bring any sense of security was the system's protection of its players—and now even something as private as a personal Inventory had been dug out and laid bare. So was killing someone inside a Safe Zone really such a hard thing for her to do?
Right—it wasn't that he was too afraid. It was just that someone had to call for backup, wasn't it?
"The NPC's killing people!"
"Hey, you—?!"
The other boy had at least a shred of loyalty; he planted himself in front of Silica—though from the look of him, that single act had drained every last bit of his strength.
An NPC again?
Yimi scrunched up her little brows, tossed the Teleport Crystal onto the ground, and went back to rummaging through Rosalia's Inventory. She didn't find her little bowl, so, disappointed, she let go of the woman—and right at that moment a pop-up bloomed out of Rosalia's messages.
"Mm?"
Looking at the red dot on it, the kitten—who had absolutely no idea this was rude—couldn't help reaching over to open it for her.
"'Boss, when are we luring those few out?'" Yimi read aloud, curious, following the words on the screen.
"Luring? Luring who?" Silica blanked.
Then another line popped up, and Yimi kept reading down the list: "'I already… can't reach the temple… gotta kill…'" She automatically skipped the characters she didn't know, and still botched the ones she did.
"You little—" Hearing her chat log read out loud, Rosalia flushed with rage and humiliation, and at last, throwing all caution to the wind, thrust her blade straight at Yimi's face.
At that very same instant, up on the Clearers' front line, a gash opened across the face of the commander of the Knights of the Blood, and his HP dropped below the yellow line for the first time.
"Meow!"
There was none of the usual mechanic that shielded NPCs from player damage, and none of the effect that kept players safe from harm inside a town—yet the HP bar that had appeared didn't fall by so much as a sliver.
"Rosalia-san?"
"Diego's lapdog!"
Yimi whipped out her polearm and carved a textbook Tornado Slash straight at Rosalia. A game that auto-corrected techniques on its own, paired with a move she already had in real life—the strike traced a flawless arc.
But the blow, one that might have dealt tremendous damage, triggered a system warning the moment it neared Rosalia's face.
"Ha… haha! Idiot, what were you even thinking? This is a player Safe Zone!" Rosalia dropped to the floor in fright, then let out a dry, relieved laugh. "What are you all standing around for? Hurry up and take her down!"
"What the… haha?" The boy who had stayed behind laughed too—not out of joy, just the reflex of someone who'd survived a brush with death.
"Mm…" Silica gently pushed aside the boy shielding her, her childish little face set in a serious expression as she looked at Rosalia. "Rosalia, what did this child just mean? Was she reading your chat window?"
They were only temporary teammates who had met not long ago, and after the way Rosalia had inexplicably tried to claim a share of Silica's own loot, Silica couldn't trust her in the slightest—yet the green cursor above the woman's head left her wavering.
"Chat window? Sorry, I've no idea what you're talking about." Rosalia shrugged, as if she weren't the one who had just been scared witless. "This really isn't the time for that, is it?" She turned to look at Yimi—and the terror crept back onto her face.
The other two were probably too far off to see, but at this range she could clearly make out that the warning marker blocking the attack for her had already filled with fine cracks and was teetering on the edge of collapse. From the look on the little brat's face, she had only stopped because the warning sign made her curious—nothing more.
Come to think of it—she'd never tried getting hit by a monster inside a Safe Zone, but a player's attack should still have that kind of pass-through-the-body effect. And besides, weren't warnings like this meant for players to see?
"What—why are you all just standing there, not helping?!" Uncomprehending, her grammar falling apart in her panic, Rosalia raised her blade and lunged at Yimi again.
Once more Yimi took the thrust head-on, without a dodge or a flinch. Maybe it was the server optimization, but this world's Love Train came with no overly flashy effects—yet at nearly point-blank range Rosalia still caught the flicker of a sheen that flashed and vanished in an instant.
And at the end of that sheen was herself.
"This has to be a joke, right? A joke—it's a joke—" She stared in shock at the wound effect blooming across her chest, watching in a daze as her health bar plunged all the way toward empty.
It made no sense. Her own damage couldn't possibly kill her in a single blow.
A healing potion—a potion! There was still time, wasn't there?!
In the last moment of her life, Rosalia lifted her head toward Yimi—and saw, at the main entrance behind her, the reinforcement the boy had called for finally arrive. Because of the doorway's size, only one had made it in.
A swordsman with black hair and a long black coat.
"Took you long enough…" Before she could finish, she scattered into polygons—the mark of a life snuffed out.
In that final second, what she had wanted was to scream at the newcomer—Took you long enough. Were you waiting around to watch me die?—even though she didn't know him at all.
"The NPC really is killing people!"
"Move!"
The armored man from before tried to shove past the youth standing at the very front, only to be stopped by a single outstretched arm. "Hold on. This is nothing but the simplest kind of con."
He glanced down at Yimi with a complicated look.
At that distance a moment ago, his stomach had nearly been pressed against the back of the little girl's head, so he had seen that layer of light with perfect clarity.
It was identical, down to the last detail, to the light that had briefly crashed the game last year.
After a moment's hesitation, the youth picked Rosalia's weapon up off the ground. "I chased that woman here. On the floors above, a man's entire party was slaughtered, and he's been going around the plaza begging high-level players to avenge him—and even so, all he wants is the culprit thrown in prison."
"It's this woman. The leader of the orange guild Titan's Hand. She uses her own green marker to lure people outside, then has her comrades help kill them."
Orange meant a player with a criminal record—someone whose trust was hard to win.
The youth, whose ID was Kirito, spared a glance at Yimi, who had stopped attacking, and his gaze landed on the Teleport Crystal on the ground. In an instant, an idea took shape.
"I was the first one here. That item was already lying on the ground from the start. My guess is that woman deliberately provoked a specific NPC—or perhaps simply ordered the NPC to do it—to fake the appearance of being murdered."
"Faked? And how exactly do you fake that? Where would you even find such a specific NPC?" The armored man plainly didn't buy it.
"Simple. When an item's durability runs out, there's a death-like effect. You just time it right and teleport out with a crystal. You don't take damage inside a Safe Zone, but equipment still has durability."
Kirito looked down at Yimi. "And besides—when I got here just now, I saw this NPC's attack get intercepted by the system. Would you mind trying to hit me, once?"
"Why?" Yimi didn't get it. Kitties didn't hit people for no reason.
Kirito scratched his cheek. "Turns out she's set up as a good kid, huh… well then—" He suddenly curled his fingers and, with just a little force, flicked Yimi on the forehead. Exactly as the rumors said, it triggered no NPC-harassment warning.
"!"
"Big dumbass!" Yimi raised her little fist and struck back—and once again ran straight into the interception signal. This time, without her weapon, there was no sign of it breaking through.
"See? Just like that." Kirito gave Yimi an apologetic look, even though she was only an NPC.
"What the heck—what's the point of doing all that?" By the looks of it, the bystanders had all bought the story.
"Come to think of it, isn't this the NPC from the rumors?"
Kirito stepped forward again. "It's to make players stop trusting the Safe Zones—that kind of thing. After all, she's a killer who needs people to leave the Safe Zone in the first place."
No one noticed the hand he had clenched tight, taut with nerves.
Framing the dead. What he was doing now was despicable, its baseness maybe far beyond anything he had ever done and come to regret—even if the dead woman was the leader of a murder guild.