"They called her a boss, but when you attack her the health bar doesn't change at all—and even a first-floor boss doesn't have a bar that short."
"So the boss-disguised-as-an-NPC thing was a rumor they spread too?"
"Bug or whatever it is, you can actually land hits on her, huh?"
"Has to be a bug. One look and you can tell it's a half-finished NPC."
The armored man, already talked around by Kirito, offered his own firsthand account. "When I greeted her just now, a quest popped up for me—but the objective and the reward list were both completely blank. Obviously some half-baked thing pushed out before it was done."
Another player nodded. "Right, when I spoke to her earlier nothing triggered either. She just walked straight past me and off she went…"
Kirito glanced at the player who had just been puzzled over being able to attack an NPC. "Actually, when I hit her a warning did pop up—one only I could see. But so far I haven't run into any real punishment or block for it. That woman just exploited this bug to make the NPC swing at her for zero effect."
Tell one lie and you had to spin more to hold it together—he was starting to understand just how much trouble that was.
Kirito shifted a little in front of Yimi. "Still, when something like this happens it actually makes me nervous. I wouldn't recommend anyone copy what I did—this game punishes NPC harassment pretty harshly. If it's gone unfixed for all the days these rumors have been going around, chances are Kayaba Akihiko deliberately left an NPC like this in to play some game about testing human nature."
"When you get down to it, we don't even know for sure why he trapped us here, and he opened up a mechanic that lets players hurt each other. It wouldn't be strange at all if he had some sick urge to run experiments on human nature."
"Dropping an NPC with damage interaction into the mix right now—maybe later he slaps an orange cursor on everyone who ever hit that NPC, then posts a fat-reward quest to hunt down orange players. This game already costs us far too much. I, for one, am not willing to take that gamble."
"Fair enough." A few of the more brainless players gave up on the itch to try something stupid.
Kirito let out a small breath.
His version of events should spread just fine—it concerned the actions of the man pulling the strings, after all. It probably had nothing to do with Kayaba Akihiko, but considering how many times a day the players cursed him already, he could take the blame for this one.
If players started thinking even the areas inside a town weren't safe anymore, this game might truly never see an end. And besides…
The "it's a bug" explanation was actually more convincing than you'd think. By now no one still believed SAO was a rock-solid, stable game.
Last year the game had crashed once. Golden fissures wreathed in white light had spread across the sky and ground of every floor, and after the "two-hour disconnection to transfer to a hospital" that Kayaba Akihiko had allowed at launch, every player was once again plunged into a dark, helpless wait.
After the fix, Kayaba Akihiko only called it a system update. The compensation that penny-pincher handed out was nothing more than a flat amount of EXP for everyone alike—a fairly limited boost for high-level players.
To an outsider, Kirito's explanation was perfectly reasonable. This much time had passed and hardly anyone had thought to use item effects to deceive people—though in a normal game that kept recruiting fresh newbies, a scam like that would have shown up sooner or later.
As for the three who had watched Yimi rifle through Rosalia's panel—they'd felt the wrongness of it, but they had also seen the system warning with their own eyes, and on top of that they didn't want to believe in something that would rob them of their sense of safety. So they could only convince themselves that Rosalia had staged the whole thing.
When it came down to it, this was just a party thrown together on the spot. They had no idea whether the woman had quietly deleted them from her friend list—and because it was only a temporary party, even knowing they'd been deceived left them with nothing but the relief of survival, not the sting of betrayal.
Nobody stood in Rosalia's shoes and looked at it from the angle of someone under attack, and no one stopped to wonder how a warning meant for players to see had appeared on an NPC's face.
"What a letdown. Break it up, break it up." Even though he'd secretly breathed easier inside, the man who said it still had to act like he'd been hoping something would happen.
Curious about Yimi as they might be, nobody wanted to keep crowding the doorway of the lodging Silica and the others had rented. It was a rude thing to do in the first place—if Kirito hadn't come in alongside the man calling for help, he couldn't have barged into someone else's locked rental at all.
"Whew…"
"Nnh."
He looked down at Yimi again. The little cat, who had been furious at his forehead-flick a moment ago, made no second attempt to hit back.
But since she hadn't gotten it out of her system, her little hand was busy misbehaving—she had opened his Inventory and was flipping through it, pulling out anything that caught her curiosity for a closer look.
A chill like watching a rowdy brat storm into a figure-collector's room washed over him.
Alarmed, Kirito quickly shuffled aside and, with lightning speed, produced the black bread and cream he was already sick of eating. "Sorry about earlier, really. Take this as an apology."
This child didn't seem all that aggressive—thank goodness for that.
In fact—maybe it was his imagination—after he flicked Yimi's head, his own head had throbbed sharply too. But it had been over a year since he'd last felt any pain at all, so he could only chalk that fleeting ache up to a phantom sensation. The game didn't produce swelling or redness on the skin, which left his sensitivity to that kind of pain fairly dull.
And it was precisely that pain-numb, unbothered look that convinced Yimi he was the type who could shrug off her Famine—the kind that made people waste away. Grudge against Kirito: +1.
Yimi put her hands behind her back and refused to take the bread. The proper trade for feeding her was a head-pat—not a knock on the skull.
She pointed at Kirito, indignant. "What's your name?"
"Kirito."
"Dumbass Kirito. You stay right here, don't leave."
Spitting out a filthy insult in her crisp, clear voice, she set the matter of settling scores with Kirito aside for now, because at the moment the only way she knew to pop that warning was to jab it with the Spear of Longinus—and one careless poke might skewer someone dead.
The black-cloaked woman she'd killed a few days back was the same. She hadn't even hit a vital spot, and the woman had just shattered—for no reason she could figure.
The person in front of her was hateful, sure, but the kitty didn't actually want to kill him.
She trotted over to Silica and held out her hand. "Give it back."
"Eh?"
Thanks to what Kirito had said, most of Silica's fear was gone, and she didn't understand at all. "Didn't you already give it all to me?"
Since when did you get to take back something you'd handed over? Especially when you were an NPC.
"I never gave you the bowl. I gave you the stuff, and you went and took the bowl too, and the fish you gave me wasn't even good—thief!" Yimi leveled a whole volley of accusations at her.
"I'm… sorry?" Silica apologized in a puzzled tone.
Seemed like a misunderstanding.
But where in this game world was there a setting that served you food without the dish to eat it from? And the only valuable thing about that Fish Soup was the bowl anyway!
Eyeing the item that looked like it could sell for a lot—and that doubled as proof she'd cleared a bug-NPC's quest—Silica reluctantly drew it from her Inventory and handed it back, if only to keep Yimi from digging through her belongings.
"Hmph."
"B-but you never gave me a reward for the quest I finished. Saying the fish tasted bad and writing off all my effort—isn't that a little too much?"
Even as she said it Silica felt a twinge of guilt; casually fishing something up was a tutorial-level task at best.
But she had a point, and Yimi frowned down at the Fish Soup in her hands, torn.
She did love the little bowl—but the truth was, back in the last world Natsuki Subaru had farmed her a few extras.
Yimi pointed at Kirito. "Can you, hit him?"
"Why are you asking that? Attacking each other inside the zone isn't allowed, but I think you can send a Duel request…"
Was this really the kind of thing an NPC could ask?
A Duel was a means of fighting one another even inside the zone, and it could be set with conditions such as "first to drop below half HP loses" or "first to land a solid heavy strike wins."
"Then hit him for me, and I'll give you the little bowl."
"Eh?"
Silica's quest log updated: Help @@ beat the crap out of dumbass Kirito.
Quest reward: @@'s Fish Soup.
Silica looked at the super-rare reward, then at Kirito, who had come to bail her out.
A trace of apology crossed her face. "I'm sorry, Kirito-san. I'll make it up to you."
Silica has challenged you to a Duel.
Kirito: "…?"