Kirito's level was a good stretch above Laughing Coffin's overall, so although that blade had landed as a heavy strike with no guard at all, it only shaved off under half of his HP.
But the split-second distraction of a two-sided pincer still let the man in front of him tag Kirito with the poison blade.
"Kirito!"
The poison effect had already entered his status bar. Besides antidote potions, the Knights of the Blood had helped Yimi develop Pufferfish Sushi to counter poison—the beauty of that dish being that even mid-battle, so long as you could free a hand, you could bolt it down fast.
And now Rat Stew's side effect showed itself: for half an hour after eating it, no other dish would grant you any buff.
It was a rarity among the Clearers—after Floor 30, through most boss fights, even if the one clearing adds at your back was a stranger you'd only just spoken to, as long as you could still hear them moving you could pour on damage in peace, and any leaked mob would get called out.
"Tch!" Kuradeel clicked his tongue inwardly. In his place, those two hits would leave a man dead, or near enough.
No one caught his little maneuver in the chaos—and even if they had, it could be written off as him simply being unskilled.
The Laughing Coffin member sneering at his successful ambush on Kirito suddenly saw the expression of the poison-blade man opposite him twist strangely.
Realizing there was someone at his back, he whipped around with quick reflexes—but by then it was already too late.
"Meow-rawr——"
Agony like something churning his guts to pulp tore up from his belly; the scene in front of him blurred past, and his back slammed into the safe zone's stone wall, taking a second, crushing hit.
"Ugh, ah..."
He had time only for a strangled cry of pain, like a throat clamped shut, before his HP bar bottomed out—and probably no one would ever know he'd felt genuine, physical-level pain in the instant before he died.
The whole floor fell silent; both sides, locked a moment ago in a tangle, froze their hands at once and looked toward the uninvited guest standing dead center.
In a fight like this, apart from the enemy's incoming attacks, everyone's attention went to the markers and HP bars over people's heads. One extra HP bar suddenly appearing might not be much of a problem—but one that plainly didn't belong to a player, ornamented, squeezing out from beneath a whole crowd of orange and green markers, was impossible to miss.
She looked like nothing more than an ordinary cat-eared little girl in red-and-white shrine-maiden garb, the weapon in her hand the short sword dropped by the man who'd just died.
"Is it a boss?"
"Hey, hey—this is a safe zone! Why is that thing here?" cried a Laughing Coffin member who'd already been leaning toward surrender, his voice sharp with terror.
They, whose only thought had ever been how to murder other players, had of course never laid eyes on how a floor-boss's HP bar differed.
And it wasn't only him—the Clearers who didn't know Yimi turned equally terrified, equally uncomprehending stares her way. This was only a low floor, sure, but the little girl had one-shot someone the instant she appeared!
Having slipped out from the rift, Yimi lifted a hand and laid it, puzzled, on Kirito's just-pierced back; the game's signature light-and-shadow effect had already faded with the passing seconds.
Slowly lowering her spear tip, the outwardly harmless little girl tensed her small face and swept the surroundings—and something faintly divine began to leak from her, pressing down on the room.
"Yimi, how did you get here?"
Kirito, on the verge of drawing his second sword for a full-power strike, swiftly switched to shielding the little girl with his free hand instead, sword leveled at the poison-blade man he judged the greatest threat.
He knew that even set down on the current floor Yimi still counted as strong; it was pure reflex. His poisoned status kept chipping at his HP, but there was no need to dwell on that—the second of invincibility frames after a rat-soup revival would wipe negative states clean.
At his side, Asuna held her own rapier level too; if this were the real world, sweat would already have beaded at her temple.
Though she couldn't understand it and was furious at Yimi disobeying yet again, a situation like this arising in a place like this would surely lead to exactly what they didn't want to see.
"A boss? No, where's the boss? Still can't tell? This is the NPC that supplies them their revival potions!"
Just as Asuna had feared, one clear-headed Laughing Coffin member broadcast the news to everyone with a great laugh, his mood seemingly untouched in the slightest by their hopeless position.
The key NPC who supplied the front line its exclusive items—though it was really only the Knights of the Blood who saw Yimi with any regularity, even on the low floors her existence wasn't much of a secret.
Word of her, though, could mostly only be heard secondhand from the Clearers; people knew so little that it had bred rumors of Clearers gone mad enough to catch rats.
"Shut your mouth!" Godfree hauled his axe around at the man.
His reaction was quick enough—unfortunately, the swing only confirmed what the man had said.
Slipping sideways past the chop, the guy sneered. "Come on, what's the point of killing? Isn't the only reason you can push us around this one NPC? Look at her HP bar—this NPC is a valid kill! If it weren't for this little—"
Dodging a wide-arc axe swing forced enormous movements. If a rapier user built for attack speed struck now, even a high-mobility short-sword user couldn't evade it.
Asuna, who'd been holding back the whole time, face gone dark, ran her strongest sword skill through his throat, dead set on strangling the words in him where he stood.
This kind of man's mind had gone wrong long ago; in the instant she killed him, he first showed the fear and shock proper to a man about to die—yet even as those looks surfaced, the laughter in his eyes never changed.
Under his goading, the flagging Laughing Coffin seemed to find their opening; some of the madmen, betting the Clearers wouldn't dare kill, threw themselves into reckless counterattacks even at a sliver of HP, eyes fixed on that thin little bar.
"Meow?"
From their clothes, Yimi had worked it out too—these gloomy things wrapped in black robes were all the same gang as that day's bad man!
Kill them all, kill them all!
Before Kirito and Asuna could react, she darted out of the protective ring the two of them and the players had half-formed around her, ran the poison-blade man through the chest with a single thrust, and flung him flying under his own wide-eyed stare.
That earlier bout of sickening, crazed laughter finally stopped for good; bodily pain was the best tool there was for waking the fear of death.
"Yimi!"
"The NPC's actually attacking people on its own..."
"Is now really the time to worry about that? Protect that child—she's our hope of clearing this game!"
The melee reopened, but this time Laughing Coffin had a primary target, and they surged toward the conspicuous little one in the center. Psychopaths who treated killing as a pastime would hardly soften at the sight of an adorable cub.
The string of interruptions and being brushed aside was starting to cost the man holding Kuradeel hostage his face; if this game had firearms, he'd have loved to fire a warning shot into the air.
As it was, all he could do was bellow, "Everybody freeze! Can't you see I've got a hostage!"
"Don't kill me! I didn't eat any Rat Stew!"
Kuradeel cried out on cue; before being taken he'd managed to hold his HP down in the yellow and thrown away his weapon, making his danger look all the more convincing.
The Clearers finally spared him a glance, though most put their surprise on Kuradeel himself.
In this HP-priority game, no one had expected a hostage situation to crop up in the Laughing Coffin crusade—how bad did you have to be to get taken hostage? And if you were that bad, why join the crusade at all? Never mind not even eating a revival dish.
Brows knitting, it was of course the Knights of the Blood who first found their hands tied; even if Kuradeel, the man who'd offended their little mascot, was no one's favorite, he still counted as one of their own.
And once this man had spoken, the Laughing Coffin members seemed to grasp something as well, stepping back a pace and breaking off their charge.
As long as those bastards kept fighting, the Clearers had grounds to strike back.
"Heh heh." Hidden in the shadows, PoH truly wanted to laugh out loud this time.
This scene plainly wasn't part of his script—but as the criminals' leader, he of course knew exactly what would come next.
The life of a key NPC versus the life of a genuinely living human—which would players choose?
By sheer utility, Kuradeel was a hundred percent worth less than that NPC. But this society's values, taken as a whole, put people first.
The Clearers were all watching. So what happened next?
Kirito, the quickest to react of every player there, had clearly grasped it too—and back on Floor 1 he'd already made his peace with taking the fall for every last beta tester.
"Sorry about this..."
His second sword slid free, the faster Dual Blades skill already primed; in a moment he'd cut down this Laughing Coffin member, and whether Kuradeel lived or died would ride entirely on his own luck.
And besides... live or die, once this battle was over Kuradeel would surely draw the whole player base's censure again—but that was something he'd long since gotten used to, wasn't it?
Yet just as his sword skill was about to swing out, Yimi—who'd opened by killing a black-robe outright—came charging in, and by her momentum it plainly did not look like she was there to rescue anyone!
The little cat's thinking was simple. With only the average knowledge of a seven-year-old, she'd had no clear notion of a "hostage" before—but thanks to her friends from Gensokyo, she'd learned exactly what a hostage was.
Hostage = accomplice.
She'd known all along this whatshisface was no good!
"Stop, Yimi!" Kirito called from behind.
No matter what, you can't be the one to play the villain here!
"Why?" Yimi's ears gave a twitch.
Choosing to trust Kirito, she stumbled a couple of steps trying to pull up—but she'd been running too fast, and those little legs simply couldn't brake. All she could do was drop her spear tip a little lower—
and drive it clean through Kuradeel's crotch.