"Half a minute to use a cooking item, then go around the closed chest and move on."
About the "empty chest that turned into a Mimic," Heathcliff had gone so far as to check with his admin privileges, confirming that aside from the problem on Floor 100 that not even the Cardinal System could repair, the low floors shouldn't contain any exploit code.
Yet now, from his admin's vantage, he could see a level-ninety-plus Mimic had somehow appeared on this tiny low floor.
This thing showing up at their door—whether it was a program issue or something else—meant Laughing Coffin had certainly been spooked.
But criminal players were hemmed in every which way, up and down the tiers. Their "guild" was even a guild in name only; orange-cursor players weren't qualified to found one, so of course their ability to relocate quickly wasn't there either.
Once they'd learned of the group's movements, the Clearers had sent the vanguard team that specialized in scouting labyrinths, Cat Masks on, to keep watch.
Heathcliff looked in that direction, his mood something like regret—or perhaps something else.
Contrary to what most players imagined, when he designed SAO he hadn't left killer-players entirely without a path to grow. Special sword skills like Dual Blades and Holy Sword actually numbered a full ten, and past Floor 75 the player with the most kills would automatically unlock "Darkness Blade"—though the glory of that particular skill probably wouldn't be seen now.
Under the weight of the moment, Asuna reached out and took Kirito's hand.
"Are you scared?"
The sudden gesture caught Kirito off guard—in a setting like this, with everyone watching...
"Not really. I can't empathize with these people, but I can't be certain I won't actually hesitate either. I'm just a little shaken after the fact."
The hidden spot he'd deliberately chosen made, of course, an excellent hideout for a criminal guild too. If they'd walked a little deeper that day, could the three of them have survived being mobbed by dozens?
Kirito glanced back and could see Klein and the other Clearers pointing at him with trembling, thunderstruck fingers, while the long-since-inured Knights of the Blood members shifted aside without a shred of loyalty, deliberately letting everyone catch them holding hands.
He turned back around, resigned.
From another angle, it did take the edge off everyone's nerves. Since they'd come this far, they'd have to be ready to get blood on their hands.
Standing not far behind them, Kuradeel glared at Kirito's back, teeth itching with fury.
By rights he wasn't even supposed to be part of this operation.
"Here, drink up—this is a second life, you know." Godfree passed him a bowl of rat soup and flashed a hearty smile. "You probably haven't tried this yet? Take the chance to apologize to that kid—thanks to her we can avoid so many deaths."
In the Knights of the Blood, Godfree was mainly in charge of training, and he was usually the one who mediated when friction cropped up between members.
Kuradeel eyed the thing in his hand with disgust. "So being able to cook up something this revolting—buttering up that little beast was all for this? You people really will throw away your very dignity to save your own skins. I don't intend to die here."
Even as he spoke, he kept his eyes fixed on Kirito's back, sneering to himself.
"Move out."
The safe zone within the cave dungeon held one enormous open space; packed with too many people it looked like a gladiatorial arena. Yet after steeling themselves and stepping inside, they didn't find the expected sea of orange cursors.
"Tch, they ran?" Klein clicked his tongue, feeling the outcome didn't do justice to the rat soup he'd forced down against the double assault on his taste buds and his spirit—he even felt like tacking on one more curse at Kayaba Akihiko.
"No—they didn't. Just the opposite..." Kirito drew his sword and backed up. "We're surrounded."
Word had leaked from somewhere; the Laughing Coffin members, long since braced to strike, suddenly sprang out. Shrill laughter rang through the vast space as their custom weapons, plainly slick with poison, thrust straight in.
Someone caught flat-footed was carved out of a third of his HP bar in one blow, but no one who'd made it into the Clearers and survived this long was a fool—everyone swiftly reset their formation and joined the fight. The orange and green markers overhead were vivid enough that there was no fear of striking the wrong person in the chaos.
And with that, every battle plan they'd drawn up in advance was thrown into disarray.
"Switch! Switch!"
Laughing Coffin's leader watched the melee below from his high perch, thoroughly pleased, doing all he could not to laugh out loud. To him, whether the organization existed at all didn't matter much; even if the base hadn't been discovered, before long he'd have leaked the location to the info brokers himself.
Saddling these sanctimonious Clearers with the sin of having killed—that was the more entertaining outcome, to him.
This was no game. This was real war now.
"These bastards have two lives, hey!"
"Ha? The rumored rat soup is real?"
In under five minutes, the Clearers—stronger in raw stats—had lost four first-lives to indecision. But with that first lesson behind them, they finally stopped wavering.
In truth this crusade had been fated to end in victory from the first moment; the only question was how many they'd have to sacrifice before they hardened their resolve to strike to kill. In this game, outside of paralysis, it was nearly impossible to beat someone into being unable to act—basically all you could do was grind an opponent to a sliver of HP until fear made them surrender.
But in a melee there was no ready way to bind an enemy, and even a surrendered player at low HP might seize the moment they turned their attention elsewhere and ambush them.
While Kirito was locked onto the poison-blade black-robe in front of him, with no attention to spare for his flank, Kuradeel—who'd been watching him—suddenly turned sideways and traded a look with the Laughing Coffin member whose weapon had crossed his, signaling him to break off and lunge at Kirito instead. In the same motion Kuradeel bared an opening, letting another Laughing Coffin member seize him by the throat as a hostage.
It was in name only—but Kuradeel truly could be counted one of Laughing Coffin's own.
* * *
"Meow? Who are you?"
The voice didn't grow any clearer for her asking; if anything it blurred further.
Yimi set down the long dress she'd been making on a black base, ears pricked, glancing this way and that.
The Knights of the Blood headquarters was quiet as a rule. When Yimi went out she was usually kept under Asuna's close guard, and when Asuna was away there was the uncle who often played with her to look after her.
But kitties never took the ordinary path.
She climbed out through the window and tried to follow the voice, yet no matter how far she walked the murmur never sharpened—instead it faded to nothing at all.
Baffled, Yimi ran out into the street. The high-tier zones tended to be deserted during floor-boss fights, and it was the same now, mid-crusade.
Why was she always hearing these strange sounds? This world was especially strange—the people, and those gaps too.
Gaps?
It came to her. Those gaps before could only be entered, never exited, and once you went in you arrived somewhere else entirely. If someone had seen her from over there and spoken to her across the rift, then of course she couldn't hear them.
Glancing left and right down the street, she ran off toward the item shop, pulled the string of floating digits out of her storage space, slapped them on the counter, and looked up at the NPC uncle.
"Give me two. Teleport Crystals."
"Certainly. Thank you for your patronage."
The Teleport Crystals passed into Yimi's hand, and her floating digits ticked down a little on their own.
She used one and arrived once more at the Ruby Palace. But this time the little girl's voice cut off entirely—though now she could see clearly where it had come from.
Overhead, as before, the unrendered module had opened into an enormous rift, visible without her having to deliberately shift her view.
In a pitch-black space with no up or down, no left or right, a black-haired little girl in a white dress lay curled and unconscious.
Yimi drew her spear, tapped the ground to launch herself up, then summoned Famine to gather the girl into its arms and carry her out—and the rift reverted to an unrendered module.
"Mm."
Before Yimi could so much as check the girl's condition, a clamor reached her.
She laid the girl down here, ran over, flattened herself against the rift, shut one eye, and peeked through—just in time to see the Laughing Coffin members run Kirito through with a blade.