"Asuna?" Asuna arched an eyebrow, repeating the way he'd just addressed her.
"Vice Commander Asuna." Kirito corrected himself.
"..."
Asuna was momentarily at a loss for words; she hadn't meant for him to make the address so distant.
The Titan's Hand remnants weren't that hard to find. Compared with Laughing Coffin, they were third-rate in every respect, from strength to brains, and unable to enter towns, the places they could hole up were very limited.
Silica, in the mid-floors, was a hugely famous idol-tier player, and with her identity as "the only player who'd ever made contact with the bug NPC" on top of that, with her help he could probably draw out more than just the one criminal guild, Titan's Hand.
But wouldn't you know it, the very moment he'd set off, Agil messaged him right on his heels. In under a minute, this big guy who'd seemed so reliable had gone and lost track of the kid.
He'd turned the entire Floor 50 Safe Zone upside down, and now his only option was to ask Argo—who was gathering intel on the new floor—for help. And that was when he ran into Asuna blocking his path.
A bow like that was as ordinary as could be, a simple little accessory; it wouldn't look strange anywhere on one's clothes. But perched on top of Asuna's head, it looked rather out of place.
As the Vice Commander of the Knights of the Blood, and a core member of the Clearers besides, she had to maintain her dignity all day long. It wasn't that she couldn't wear a bow, but in a spot as showy as the top of her head, and at this particular juncture of all times...
"What's the deal with that bow on your head?" Kirito asked urgently.
Asuna folded her arms over her chest. "How I dress myself is any business of yours?"
"No, it suits you nicely up there... I mean, how did you get it?"
Managing to slip in a compliment even in his urgency left Asuna a touch embarrassed, since she'd actually intercepted him with the little scheme of using this bow to get some payback.
"Ah, this..."
Of course, if she got hold of something valuable, she'd definitely return it after witnessing his panic. And whatever she got with this bow probably couldn't be reclaimed through the system's within-the-hour retrieval function.
Come to think of it, she'd swiped this bow while the kid was asleep, which actually left her feeling a bit guilty. But Kirito's reaction—asking straight out about the bow's origin—was as if he knew something.
"Beat a hidden monster and it dropped. Why?"
The instant the words left her mouth she regretted them. She could easily have said she'd done some hidden quest; that way she could just as well have fished out of Kirito exactly how much he knew, given that the kid did hand out abnormal quests too.
Her on-the-spot quick thinking still hadn't been honed.
Asuna clearly saw Kirito's fingers slacken, then clench tight again.
Kirito drew a deep breath. "Can you tell me what happened? Did she attack a player on her own? Or something else?"
"Does that matter?"
Asuna thought again of the plan to draw the field boss into the village that had been shot down today—the start of her rotten mood.
"What Asuna... the Vice Commander means is—if an NPC counts as neutral and good, but drops rare items, would you strike without the slightest hesitation? What if she has a consciousness of her own? What if she can't revive? Aren't you yourself actually also—"
"Kirito..."
Asuna was moved, just slightly. Those few short sentences had already made her understand what Kirito knew, and his attitude toward this NPC.
If this child really was the mid-floor bug NPC, then beyond mere game mechanics, it was indeed possible someone had tried to move her up here, possibly even burning a costly Corridor Crystal to do it.
Asuna opened her mouth to say something, only to see a Duel window suddenly spring up in front of her. She'd intercepted him precisely to pay back that earlier score, yet having him be the one to issue it first felt like something else entirely.
Her finger hovered in the air for half a second, then still came down on "Confirm."
10, 9, 8...
Through the countdown that gave players time to prepare, neither of them exchanged a word, so much so that when the count hit zero, Kirito's dash caught even the one hailed as The Flash—Asuna—slightly off guard.
In their last Duel, this guy had held back!
Realizing this, Asuna neither retreated nor dodged. Instead she used the lunging sword skill [Shooting Star] to close in, and then, just as her nickname The Flash implied, chained seamlessly into thrusts of blistering speed.
Faced with her surprise assault, though, Kirito pulled the same old trick, moving his other hand to do something. Obviously Asuna wouldn't fall for the same con twice; this time she kept her attention off Kirito's other hand and blocked his attacks with her whole heart.
Because this game had sword-skill correction: once a skill was swung out, it would almost invariably carry the full motion to completion. Last time, she'd assumed Kirito would produce a second sword and so had struck at his other hand, leaving her too late to block his real attack.
But this time was different, because Asuna suddenly noticed that the blade in Kirito's hand wasn't the one from their previous Duel. It had happened too abruptly for her to even register that, when this guy drew just now, he'd pulled another sword out of the system—which meant—
The blade he actually used as his main weapon was still sheathed on his back, undrawn.
But so what? While holding a one-handed sword, the only thing the other hand could hold was a shield; a sword skill that wielded two swords at once simply didn't exist in SAO.
Yet Kirito really had drawn one! With one hand already holding a sword, he swung out with a second blade a sword skill Asuna had never seen, landing a heavy strike!
The Duel ended. Since it wasn't an unrestricted Duel, victory was decided by whichever side's HP dropped past the halfway mark first, or whichever landed a heavy attack first.
Asuna's blade flew from her hand and stuck point-down in the ground.
Dual Blades—a Unique sword skill on par with Heathcliff's Holy Sword, and one still fairly unfamiliar to Kirito. He hadn't wanted to display it in front of anyone, because in this game he'd come to understand, deeply, just how terrifying human envy could be.
Kirito sheathed both swords and watched Asuna in silence for a while.
"You killed a living child, Asuna."
He took out the bread he'd been carrying and had meant to eat himself, and set it down in front of Asuna's fallen blade.
That done, he turned to leave, paused for a moment after the first step—
then, breaking into a run, went.
Asuna reached out a hand toward his retreating back, even forgetting to ask what that skill of wielding two swords at once had been about.
"A living... child?"
He'd given her no chance at all to explain, but when it came down to it, it was only because she herself had misspoken. This was something she ought to apologize for.
Asuna pressed a hand to her chest.
She opened her inventory and scrolled down.
The bow's description said that winning got you one of the opponent's most valuable items, while losing got you a random one, meaning value wasn't guaranteed.
From the very bottom of her inventory, Asuna pulled out a pair of boxer shorts.
"..."