"Ah-rawr-oh——"
A scream more wretched than Tom's own. He couldn't even hold the pose of a man taking a hostage; he simply went down flat on the ground. Unlike Kirito, whose wound's light effect had healed a few seconds after the stab, the crotch of Kuradeel's trousers showed an outright gap torn in the light-screen of his body.
"A—ambulance..."
Pain beyond coherence, his words without logic, his mind a blank—he didn't even check the HP bar that had already dropped into the red.
A direct hit to the vitals sharpened his voice a few degrees. This was far worse than the critical strike he'd taken for teasing the girl at the next desk in grade school; beyond the pain, he genuinely felt that his single most important part had dropped clean off.
Every man present instinctively clamped his thighs together—but one look at Kuradeel's contorted face and they felt little sympathy. Only Kirito knew he was truly in pain; everyone else assumed he was putting on a show to wriggle free, since it was common knowledge the game had no sense of pain.
Way too melodramatic. Ease off already.
"You bastard—what the hell are you even doing?" The man who'd been holding him hostage finally snapped out of it and swung a blade at Yimi's head.
Yimi merely turned her puzzled gaze toward Kirito, and an unseen force radiated out from behind her all on its own, flinging the would-be attacker away; the Laughing Coffin member's HP bar, still above the green line, bottomed out at once—dead on the spot.
No one could see The World standing behind Yimi, arms folded, watching them all.
An instant kill—no one could even trace the arc of the strike.
Now, however tempting that shallow little HP bar beside the cat ears was to reach for, the rest of Laughing Coffin couldn't help but freeze for a moment. But Kirito, sickened every step of the way here, knew this lot would never give up on causing trouble.
He strode to Yimi's side and spared a pitying glance for Kuradeel on the ground—the man he'd found so irritating not long ago. Back then Kirito himself had only taken one of Yimi's little fists to the belly; this fellow had been lopped clean off... and the wound effect that ought to have healed within seconds showed no sign at all of recovering.
The knot in his chest was still there, but seeing how pathetic the man looked, Kirito reached out to grab his arm anyway. "Can you stand?"
Then—perhaps his earlier thrashing had brushed something loose—Kirito's not-especially-hard grip pulled the metal vambrace right off his forearm.
And Kirito found himself staring at the design printed on the man's arm, sinking into thought.
Two black coffin lids stacked one over the other, an ugly grin painted across the top—the emblem of the guild-in-name-only, Laughing Coffin.
"I see. So this was your little trick?"
Kirito withdrew that last thread of pity, patted Yimi's head to let her know she'd done nothing wrong, then seized Kuradeel's wrist and raised it high for everyone to see:
"You wanted to sow discord this way, to make us lose our greatest hope? This is the most you people are capable of."
Announcing outright that Kuradeel was a Laughing Coffin mole would open cracks of distrust among all the Clearers, himself included—even the largest guild, the Knights of the Blood, had a Laughing Coffin plant inside it; heaven knew how many more they'd buried among them.
But rather than let that crack sit between Yimi and the rest of the Clearers, better to make the Clearers shoulder it among themselves—that was how he saw it in that moment.
Watching from the shadows, the corner of PoH's mouth curled back down; he knew this show had nothing left worth watching.
"So that's how it is, Kuradeel!"
Godfree, who'd held a shred of care for the man, glared at him in fury. "Stop dressing up your guilty conscience with that phony acting. Even now you're still trying to turn the blame onto little Yimi?"
Kuradeel wanted to argue back, but the ceaseless, bloodless pain left him beyond speech.
Through all of it Heathcliff had been staring thoughtfully at the spot where Yimi had appeared; only now did he call out his first order since the operation began—and it was for Laughing Coffin:
"You have no hope left. Lay down your weapons and surrender now, and you may keep your lives."
"Idiots. From the moment this game began, no one was ever walking out of it alive. Did you actually believe Kayaba Akihiko would let you go home?"
The line pressed on the players and, in the same breath, turned the handful who'd wavered toward surrender back into the madmen they'd always been.
We're all going to die in the end—so why not enjoy this game's killing mechanic?
Look at that little thing that had dared run to the front line, with only a short sliver of an HP bar. Wasn't this Kayaba Akihiko deliberately reminding them she was a killable NPC? She just had high attack, that was all—a high-attack, low-defense monster was hardly the first they'd ever met.
Maybe killing her even dropped some rare gear, and these sanctimonious Clearers would stoop to pick it up while silently thanking them for it.
No—better not, actually. Cutting down this little thing to plunge everyone else into despair was exactly what they wanted.
The mindset couldn't have been simpler. They just truly relished this game, and their thrill was no different from any other PvP—like looting and razing another player's stash and camp in a building game, or landing a blind on the enemy right as they set up their siege engine in a certain MOBA.
Under the Clearers' aghast stares, some of them simply turned their backs, abandoning all defense in a "go on then, kill me" posture, and charged as a pack toward Yimi.
The first to do it was even at a sliver of HP; Laughing Coffin had no shortage of people willing to gamble their lives that way—like the poison-blade man Yimi had killed, who'd charged in laughing to land two more cuts even at his last drop of health.
This "one hit and I'm dead" gambit was precisely the ground on which the Clearers couldn't bring themselves to strike and kept urging surrender instead; the single greatest thing that let Laughing Coffin stand against the Clearers was that the Clearers weren't prepared to kill.
"You idiots, do you really think—you still have a chance!"
Just as Yimi raised a paw to finish them off, one Knights of the Blood member who'd been holding back all this while to avoid killing cut down the man who'd dared turn his back.
Exactly as PoH had thought, this show was over. After Yimi appeared, the resolve of the Knights of the Blood had firmed up considerably. It was only killing an animal, after all.
"Whether we get back or not, whatever—what I'm looking at right now is you people daring to aim your malice at a kid who sneaks up to braid my hair while I'm asleep!" said a long-haired uncle.
"That's nothing—she gave me a nickname!"
"Idiot, everyone in our guild has a nickname. Mine's 'the man who's like a woman.'"
"Damn it, why didn't I ever get pranked?"
What guilt of killing? They were only protecting the kid next door—their own kid, practically—the one who said hello to them every single day.
"Didn't our Commander just hand down the final warning?"
By this point Laughing Coffin, gutted past recovery, couldn't so much as pressure them anymore.
Those who wouldn't surrender were cut down; those willing to surrender were left a life and readied for escort to the Black Iron Palace Prison.
Incredible, really—here they'd thought they'd get to watch this NPC put her skills on display.
Heathcliff planted his shield on the ground and gazed quietly toward Yimi.
"Mm?" Puzzled, Yimi lowered her hand.
It looked like she didn't have to do anything after all.
"Hey, Kirito... what's this little girl's name again?" Klein asked, passing by and pointing at Yimi.
"Yimi."
"Ohh~ so the Knights of the Blood have been keeping such a cute NPC all to themselves—damn it, I'm jealous! Little one, can big brother ask you a question? That rat soup—how much do you usually sell it for?"
"I sell it... same price as a Teleport Crystal."
"I knew it! The Knights of the Blood sold it to us at nearly triple that!" Klein hollered.
Kirito raised a hand and, whether on purpose or not, informed him: "I can actually get the friend price through Asuna. Sometimes I even get it for free."
Not that it was really free—when he came to visit Yimi with snacks, she'd happily make it for nothing as long as he supplied the raw ingredients.
"Is it over? Yimi's practically become the guild's idol." Watching everyone begin to wrap things up, Asuna let out a long breath.
She'd killed a man with her own hands too.
She shot another glance at Kuradeel on the ground—still putting on his act even now, wailing away, refusing to face everyone's judgment. Truly revolting.
At last Asuna set her hands on her hips, put on a stern face, and turned to Yimi. "So. How exactly did you get here?"
"Mm..." Yimi's attention drifted to her storage space—more precisely, to the black-haired little girl lying inside it.