The Black Iron Palace had originally housed the Room of Resurrection, but ever since the death game began, its defining feature had taken on the exact opposite meaning.
There was a giant metal monument that hadn't existed in the closed beta—the Monument of Life—engraved with the names of all ten thousand players. The names of the dead were considerately struck through with a line, with the time and cause of death neatly noted after each.
Because no one wanted to face the cruel truth carved into it, the place stayed as deserted as ever.
Coming here obviously wasn't about good food. He simply wanted to confirm one thing.
"Found it." Rosalia. Cause of death: suicide.
He had expected the monument either to say she'd been killed by some NPC or, as the rumors claimed, to display a jumble of garbled code. Either way, no one would notice that Yimi had killed the woman.
"What are you looking at?"
"The roster. The ones with a line struck through them are the dead." Kirito answered with a trace of sorrow.
Solo player though he was, he was still one of the Clearers. Of course the roster held names of people he'd spoken and chatted with.
"Is it a gravestone?" Yimi knew about this sort of thing. Back when she and Itsuka Shiori buried a kitten, Shiori had set up a very simple gravestone too.
"It's not a gravestone. My name's up there on it too, you know."
Using a targeted Teleport Crystal still stung a little, but being able to bring her along—that was really nice.
Compared to the town NPCs who'd glitch out endlessly with "It's too dangerous" the moment you swung a sword near them, lively NPCs like this one—ones you could actually chat with—Kirito had met a fair number before, mostly quest NPCs.
For the sake of optimization, town NPCs, especially on the earlier floors, ran AI algorithms that could handle little more than basic questions and directions.
Back in the closed beta, some people with nothing better to do had researched NPC interactivity on purpose. Someone like Kirito, who only wanted to grind levels and push into more territory, of course never paid it any mind—but a case like the one in front of him was a first even for him.
"Hello, is there something I can help you with?" The passing female NPC whose clothes Yimi had grabbed looked down and asked gently—no warning popped up the way it did when a player touched them.
"Mm?"
Yimi loosened her claws and stepped back. Once she disengaged from the dialogue, the female NPC turned away, ignored her, and set off to keep wandering.
Then Yimi grabbed her again.
"Hello, is there something I can help you with?"
Yimi let go once more, then grabbed her again.
"Hello…" The same line.
The kitty backed away in tiny, shocked little steps until she was beside Kirito, and tried tugging at his clothes.
Kirito stifled a laugh and, deliberately mimicking the female NPC's posture to tease her, said, "Hello, is there something I can help you with?"
"Nnh!" Yimi hurriedly scrambled away from him.
Everyone in this world was seriously off! Weirder than every single person she'd ever met. The fact alone that the dead left no corpse already blew past a kitty's understanding, and now this woman was behaving like… like some kind of thing; her limited vocabulary couldn't dig up a word for it.
"Haha." Kirito laughed out loud for the first time in ages.
"What are you laughing at?" Yimi tilted her little face up at him.
"Nothing. They've got their own things to be busy with—better not to bother them." He couldn't help patting Yimi's shrine-maiden hat.
"Busy?" Yimi looked at the female NPC who was only pacing back and forth, more confused than ever.
Kirito cut into her train of thought. "Did you finish the bread I gave you? Still got room in that stomach for more food?"
"Is there good food here?"
"Mm. Plenty of people pick where to settle based on the food—a lot of dishes are only sold at specific shops. But play—well, we can learn to cook for ourselves too. Compared to a restaurant's fixed menu, experimenting with your own recipes out of different ingredients is pretty fun, don't you think?"
He had no real authority on the subject; he wasn't about to waste the effort of grinding skill proficiency on cooking.
Among the people he knew… Asuna, vice-commander of the Knights of the Blood—the guild widely acknowledged as the strongest—seemed to be into that sort of thing. But asking her was out of the question—things between the two of them were a little strained right now.
As the Town of Beginnings, the first floor didn't actually have much good food, but aside from the long-resident guild "The Army," there were also over a thousand players who refused to take the risk and lived there permanently.
Unwilling to grind mobs for levels yet still needing to deal with the hunger illusions the brain served up and the matter of lodging, they naturally had no choice but to work as blacksmiths, cooks, or merchants, just as in real life.
"Before that, can you change into something else first?"
Kirito still didn't want too many people seeing that Yimi existed—especially since the first floor counted as The Army's turf, and those people always gave off a fanatical air.
At the very least, he had no doubt that if The Army found Yimi, there was a better than seventy-percent chance they'd shout "for the good of the players" and just attack her outright to see whether beating her dropped any items. After all, The Army was the type to attack any orange player on sight, no questions asked. He'd tried "setting the record straight," but there was no guaranteeing someone wouldn't still believe this child had a boss side to her.
"Why change clothes?"
"Because this outfit's a bit eye-catching, and Yimi doesn't want—who's there?!" Halfway through his sentence, Kirito suddenly drew his sword and leveled it at a certain spot.
"Who's there? As if I were eavesdropping or something." A mocking voice, and a man dressed in a black cloak stepped out.
Only the lower half of his face was visible, curled into a jeering smirk.
He needled them with feigned confusion. "Or did I misremember? This is supposed to be a public area inside a Safe Zone, isn't it? So how could anyone want to whisper secrets here and then feel like they were being eavesdropped on?"
"Dressed exactly like Laughing Coffin… why are you here?" Kirito shifted to stand in front of Yimi.
He said it, but this man's cursor was green. Orange-cursor players faced restrictions entering towns—Kirito was deliberately branding this sneaking, skulking guy as a member of Laughing Coffin. For offenses short of directly killing another player, an orange player had five chances to atone and restore their cursor to green, and a case like Rosalia's earlier could happen too.
"That Raki kid said one of our comrades was killed by an NPC, y'know. So awful." His voice was thick with mockery, and he made no attempt to deny his identity. "Wow—Great Hero, are you protecting a killer NPC now?"
"So the rumors were spread by you people?"
"These aren't rumors, you know. I hear this little girl even flashed a monster's health bar once. Let me think… how about our murder guild does a good deed for once and subjugates a monster?"
As the first victims, what they knew was clearly firsthand—for instance, that with the front line only having reached the fifty-something floors, Yimi's power tier was at least that of a floor-seventy boss or higher.
They didn't know, though, that Yimi could kill inside a Safe Zone too—which was exactly why they dared come tailing Kirito.
The whole reason a murder guild formed was to feed their own sadistic urges no matter the cost; spitting out something vile to make other people's skin crawl was routine for them by now.
Having planted a single threat, he pulled out a Teleport Crystal and left without hesitation.
"He's a bad one!" Yimi realized belatedly.
That man's clothes were the same as the two she'd taken out at the very start! Because she'd failed to finish that man off in time, trouble had now come looking for the kitty.
"Looks that way." Thoroughly creeped out by them, Kirito sheathed his sword, his face grim.
He turned something over in his mind, then looked at the little girl beside him. "Yimi…"
"You, crouch down." Yimi beckoned to him, as if she'd figured something out.
"What is it?" Kirito did as told.
Yimi flopped straight onto his back. "Stand up. A little to the left. A little forward."
"Like this?" Kirito shuffled his feet.
Then he watched Yimi produce a Colored Marker from who-knew-where and draw a line straight across the name "Raki" among the densely packed rows on the metal monument.
"…"
This little one had some problems understanding what he'd just explained.