Floor 56. Compared to floors built around eternal winter or fairy themes, this one was hailed by players as utterly featureless.
In fact, right after clearing Floor 55's floor-guardian boss, Kirito had come across the sole surviving leader of the Silver Flags—the guild Rosalia had ruined—going around asking others to avenge his guild.
Even with his heart full of hatred, all the leader wanted was to throw the Titan's Hand members into prison. For that, he'd spent his entire fortune to buy a Corridor Crystal that let you set coordinates freely—a precious item only certain large bosses ever dropped.
"So it really won't work!"
"How could a strategy like this possibly succeed?"
"But you know, isn't monster AI often more responsive than an NPC's? On the first three floors there was even that trait where bee mobs attacked a field boss and drove it berserk…"
"Nii-chan, come hide over here, quick!" A bright-eyed NPC girl waved from the village's front gate.
Kirito hurried inside, watching the village's main gate stop the boss cold.
He patted the little girl's head. "Thank you."
An NPC-harassment warning popped up.
Kirito sheepishly pulled his hand back. He'd completely forgotten about that little detail—it was only the simplest of head-pats.
"That's enough!"
A woman with chestnut hair and orange eyes, in the Knights of the Blood vice-commander's uniform, slammed a fist onto the meeting table. Anyone could read the fury on that face—pretty enough to debut as an idol without a scrap of makeup.
The large field boss blocking the way, "GeoCrawler," was a thing shaped like a serpentine monster-worm, nearly its whole body sheathed in indestructible armor; every attack method the players currently knew of couldn't scratch it.
Its one visible soft weak point sat on its belly—but the spot it had coiled up in, running all the way to the village gate, was a canyon-like passage, and with its bulk, once it wedged itself into that passage there was no gap left for anyone else to work with.
"No—it's only been two days. There's really no need to get this angry, whatever the case."
Speaking up right then clearly wasn't wise of Kirito, because a good portion of Asuna's anger was aimed at him—the guy who'd skipped the strategy meeting the second they reached a new floor. And now that he'd finally shown up today, another person on good terms with him had failed to come.
Asuna shot him a glance. "'Use delicious meat to lure the boss into showing an opening'—a plan like that, you should have known was impossible the instant it was proposed."
"Don't say that. Wasting my A-Grade Ingredient hurt me too—with Kirito here, I honestly thought it was a sure thing." The down-and-out samurai beside them weakly raised a hand.
"You made me the sucker without a word of warning…"
This down-and-out samurai was Klein, the first person Kirito had met in this game. Back then, at Klein's request, Kirito—a Beta Tester showing a newbie the ropes—had spent a whole day teaching him, but after Kayaba Akihiko announced the death game, they'd parted ways.
Kirito had actually invited him to travel together, but Klein had come to SAO alongside friends he'd met in other games, and naturally couldn't abandon them.
In that situation Kirito had to face a more practical concern: he couldn't take more people along… not even one more newbie. Whether they'd become a burden aside, if anyone died under his lead, the responsibility would fall on him.
Kind-hearted Klein had seen his misgivings back then and volunteered to split off. From then on, at every meeting, no matter how breezily and warmly Klein greeted him, Kirito could never quite bring himself to meet his eyes—never mind that Klein had genuinely led his clueless friends to survive to this day, and even joined the Clearers.
"And then, no surprise, it failed. So leaving this raid entirely to the Knights of the Blood is fine, isn't it? Just like I said yesterday—when it's about to charge into the village, don't close the gate. Wait until the boss is busy slaughtering the NPCs, then strike from behind."
Kirito objected at once. "Hold on, that's too reckless. NPCs aren't the same as objects like rocks and trees—they—"
"You mean to say they have lives too? Yesterday, when you weren't part of the operation, that little girl pulled the exact same open-the-gate-and-shout routine when the boss tried to charge in. They're no different from monsters—no matter how many times they're killed, they just reset after twenty-four hours."
"That sort of thing…"
No—if it had been the day before yesterday, Kirito might have been left speechless by her. But it was precisely because he'd worried the child might get hunted down if left outside unattended that he'd brought her back.
Yet even though he couldn't agree, he had no way to explain his reasons—it would only invite everyone's ridicule—so silence was the only thing he could choose.
Klein, usually so breezy, seemed to read his heart once again, and rudely raised a hand, asking a question players would find a touch offensive. "Hold on a sec—mind if I first ask your level, KoB Vice-Commander-sama?"
The upshot was that Klein, on Kirito's side, deliberately asked Asuna's level, hoping to lend more weight to Kirito—who stood a full four levels above her—only for it to backfire, prompting an indignant Asuna to challenge him to a fight.
Naturally Kirito won, and it all ended on a sour note.
Back at Agil's item shop.
"Get down, don't touch that, I'll catch you! I'll even let you rub my bald head."
Agil was craning his neck in a panic, arms flung wide, adjusting his footing, while the little girl Kirito had brought back yesterday had somehow scaled a shelf whose goods weren't even stocked yet, hugging and sniffing a none-too-expensive healing potion.
The sight of any board fixed to a wall made Yimi want to climb it.
"Sorry I couldn't let you take part in today's operation." Kirito apologized to Agil first.
Someone had to watch this child, and as a solo player he genuinely didn't have many people he could trust.
At his request, Yimi had now changed out of the widely known black-and-white witch outfit, swapped for a Japanese shrine-maiden getup, that pair of dainty cat ears left openly on display.
One glance still marked her as an NPC, and there was no NPC cursor above her head—but at least people wouldn't immediately leap to the version in the rumors, provided she didn't go around issuing quests for no reason.
"It's fine. We settled yesterday that I'd be no help even if I were there."
Still, Agil wasn't a friendless solo player like him, and an item shop was, after all, a place people were always dropping by. Maybe he really should think about settling somewhere quiet.
Right as he was thinking it, Yimi climbed down off the shelf on her own and held up the cube in her hand. "What even… is this?"
"A Teleport Crystal—the price isn't cheap these days." Agil hurriedly snatched it back and murmured to Kirito in a low voice, "You really did bring back one heck of an NPC."
Her behavior showed no trace of AI computation at all.
"Mm…"
Kirito looked down at the Teleport Crystal—different from a Corridor Crystal, but close enough in effect. "Could I trouble you to watch her another two days? I've still got some important things to handle on my end."
He'd taken the Silver Flags leader's Corridor Crystal, and hadn't yet fully locked up the Titan's Hand members.
"I'm going out to play." Yimi planted her hands on her hips, chin up, chest out.
Kirito, you little dumbass. You've got no right to make the kitty stay put in one spot. The kitty goes wherever the kitty wants.
Kirito feigned distress. "Is that so? But I still wanted to bring you back a treat. Food's the kind of thing that has durability, you know—if I come back and there's no one here, I suppose I'll just have to feed it to Agil."
Agil arched an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean, 'feed it to Agil'?"
"The treat, don't feed it to him." Yimi's little frame stopped standing quite so straight.
"Then be a good girl and wait here for me to come back." Kirito smiled and tapped her forehead once. "We'll think about going out to play later."
And he left.
"Good grief."
Agil crouched down and looked at Yimi. "If I remember right, Floor 6 has a puzzle-game theme. If you behave, I can have a friend pick some up and bring them back for you to play with."
"That cube—what's it for?" Yimi still couldn't get the Teleport Crystal off her mind.
She'd found this thing before, when she went through both Kirito's and Rosalia's Inventories.
"It's for teleporting between designated places. Though you probably can't use it, right?"
"Teleport?" Yimi grabbed another Teleport Crystal and fiddled with it.
And then she suddenly vanished from right in front of Agil.
"…"