"Hssss... mm, hmm, hmm..."
"Quiet."
"Ugh..."
"I told you to keep quiet! Squealing that shrill—did you get something cut off?"
Black Iron Palace Prison. One of the imprisoned Laughing Coffin members drove a kick into Kuradeel.
Setting the coordinates here with a Corridor Crystal, opening a portal, and locking the surrendered inside—the cost of all that had been steep, and in here there was nothing to do beyond the bare minimum of survival.
The prison's iron door couldn't be destroyed—or rather, most structures in this game couldn't be destroyed at all. Back in the first week after launch, someone who couldn't take it had shouted about wanting to break this world apart, then hacked away at one brick of the wall for ages under the beta testers' "look at this idiot" stares.
"Hey—is this guy's 'wound' just not going away? Did it glitch?"
"Getting hurt there—that's humiliating even inside a game."
"Hey." Through the jeering, a low voice cut in abruptly. "If this game really does end, what happens to us back in reality?"
"..."
"Will we go to prison in reality? We killed people in the game and they really died, so... "
Before he could finish, the same foot that had just kicked Kuradeel slammed into him. "Idiot! Kayaba Akihiko killed those people—what's it got to do with us? Everyone outside saw it: Kayaba Akihiko ran a death game and used the 'bomb' he built to electrocute them. What law says any of it lands on us?"
And in fact it was just as they said—everyone who died in this death game would, once outside, have it pinned on Kayaba Akihiko's head.
"Tr—true enough."
"I've already had my fill of fun. If those simpletons—"
"Clang——"
Somewhere far down the corridor, a sound like something striking metal choked off the voices of Laughing Coffin and the rest of the prisoners alike.
"The meal-delivery NPC?"
A reflection stretched long by the dusk reached all the way to them, its form compressing and shifting with every step it took; in some places SAO's light and shadow weren't as true to life as the real world.
"Who's there!"
The whole approach hadn't made the faintest footfall. A small creature much like a panda came into view, sitting primly at the door, carefully sizing them up and counting.
"What is that thing—a cat?"
No one noticed that at the sight of this little ball of fluff, Kuradeel—who'd been whimpering in pain—suddenly went white with terror and scrambled into the corner on all fours.
The Knights of the Blood had all seen that little girl take on her cat shape; sometimes she liked to become this and flop across the counter, idly swatting a paw at whoever passed by.
"Ha? Is this what they feed people in prison?" joked a man still cloaked and wearing a strange mask, pointing at the little ball—and in the next instant his forearm vanished from before his eyes, too fast for him to even react, followed a beat later by pain that carried through exactly like real flesh.
Having tasted the lesson of black-robes coming back for revenge afterward, Yimi wasn't about to let a repeat of the Diego situation happen.
"Ahh!! What's going on? It hurts—it hurts, damn it! Why?"
Rolling in agony yet still able to enunciate; a body that wouldn't bleed did, to some degree, ease the mental shock of being wounded.
"Meow." Yimi licked her paw.
Like that giant paw earlier, and now the slash she'd thrown straight from her paw—she didn't remember ever learning such a thing; a mere wave of the hand and it simply appeared, without so much as spending any energy or stamina.
Anything Yimi had studied left a deep impression on her; every book she ate, she read diligently.
"Hey, this guy..." Someone noticed the decorated, oddly familiar HP bar that had appeared above Yimi's head.
Normally a player's HP bar curved along beside the face; because hers had shrunk down so much it stood straight up over her head, and the shift in position let them finally see the text on its left—text that usually went unseen, both because it was inconspicuous and because it clipped into her head.
A marker that snuffed out any will to resist.
"Ha ha—that bastard Kayaba Akihiko played us... played every last one of us." No sooner had he finished than Yimi, using her small-form's size advantage to slip through, battered him to a pulp.
"God almighty!"
The second man's agonized display succeeded in waking their fear of death; some screamed and threw themselves against the bars, crying out for the guard NPCs, and some, like Kuradeel, curled into a corner to shrink their own presence.
But they seemed to forget to take off the cloaks that marked them.
"I'm sorry, spare me, I'll never do anything bad again, I'm sorry! I'm sorry..." This was Kuradeel; of them all his terror ran deepest, the pain at his crotch never once easing—to the point that he'd begun to wonder whether his real self had taken the same injury.
"Flesh or life?"
Keeping her seated posture, Yimi recited the Soul Incantation that belonged to her alone.
Behind her, a Stand condensed from black mist held up a clattering balance, as though weighing the souls of the guilty.
Under the terrified stares of the other orange-name players, one Laughing Coffin member after another clutched his throat and shattered into a spray of polygons.
The people of this world didn't even leave a corpse when they died—truly strange.
Like a bat cave sent into a panic, they tried to flee through the vast prison's limited space. And the reach of it wasn't aimed at them alone; certain ones who let their fear show got their HP bars shaved away just as inexplicably—like the Titan's Hand members Kirito had locked up here not long before.
"Spare me, I only ever stole things! I never once killed anyone!" One who'd been imprisoned early on clutched his head, trembling, and shouted his plea to whoever might—or might not—be able to hear it.
That much wasn't a lie. Though people had drawn up a "red player" label to mark the killers, every criminal player bore an orange marker, and "The Army"—one of the two great guilds that had once headed the Clearers—clung to the principle of attacking any orange name outright, crime or no crime, so the prison still held a few minor offenders.
In the gloom of the cell, the special HP bar at the very center gradually thinned away, leaving only the unlucky ones—petty thieves, or those turned orange by being framed by green-name Laughing Coffin members like Kuradeel (feign an attack, then pull it with a quick-sheathe skill at the crucial moment, tricking the other into striking first and going orange)—clutching their chests, not daring to breathe too loud.
Just as she'd come, she left without a single footstep, because a kitty made no sound walking to begin with.
But it seemed she'd missed one.
"I survived, ha ha... ha ha?"
Kuradeel laughed like a man who'd cheated death, because he was, in fact, a green name; the killings he'd taken part in had always been by indirect means.
He looked down at the light-screen at his crotch, still holding its pain. As long as he could make it back to reality, this phantom feeling shouldn't linger on—right?