They didn’t need to make this grand public display. A simple question of “Do you want to join a guild, yes or no?” would have settled the matter. Instead, the members of both the DKB and ALS whispered among themselves nervously, and Agil had his hands spread, head shaking with the folly of it all. Nothing about this reflected well on Lind. How could this decision possibly benefit them?
My mind was full of nothing but question marks, but Lind seemed to be waiting for an answer, so I felt obliged to stand and speak.
“Umm…I hate to say this after you said we were head and shoulders above the rest, but I have no plans for the future to join either guild. In fact, I figured that both of you would have expected this answer.”
Kibaou snorted theatrically, and Lind seemed to falter self-consciously, but his familiar hard expression was back in a moment.
“I understand. By the way, may I ask your reasoning for explicitly choosing not to enter a guild, under the circumstances?”
“Huh? Um…”
I wasn’t sure what he meant or how to answer.
By “under the circumstances,” was he referring to SAO’s current state? Lind seemed to be assuming that creating a guild was the ideal solution to the current, contradictory aims of “beating the game” and “surviving.” Based on that premise, his point of view did not match mine, but I did not have the time or obligation to explain my entire philosophy to him.
“It’s not based on some grand, explicit choice. It’s just not my style…that’s all.”
“Ahh. So you are stating that you have no intention of joining or leading a guild for the moment.”
Now it was my turn to grimace. “Sure, you could put it that way. If I’m not going to be a guild member, I certainly don’t want the responsibility of being a leader…”
…Aha, so that’s what this is about.
Something in what I said hinted at Lind’s true intentions. He was trying to get me to make that very statement to a public audience. He wanted to crush the creation of a third guild forming before it could begin.
But what a convoluted, silly way to go about that. Who was going to step up and join a guild called the Black Beaters? He could have just asked, “Are you going to make a guild, yes or no?” Hell, if he’d simply ordered me not to start a guild, I would have happily agreed.
On the other hand, I could understand that he was worried about the possibility that if I was excluded from the start, I might create my own guild out of spite. This cautious, roundabout way of doing things reminded me strongly of someone else: the original leader of the blue precursors to the DKB, Diavel.
Three times before we fought the boss of the first floor, I received an offer to buy my Anneal Blade through Argo the Rat. The offers were coming from Kibaou, who’d been a lone wolf at the time, but it was Diavel who was giving him the orders. Diavel wanted the Last Attack bonus on Illfang the Kobold Lord, in order to better grip the reins of leadership. So he sought to remove his biggest obstacle—me—by buying my weapon away from me. Again, it was a very convoluted way to go about it. If he’d just asked me to let him have the LA, I probably would have agreed—for a price, of course.
I didn’t think that Lind was aware of Diavel’s machinations, either at the time or now. It was half coincidence and half imitation of Diavel’s ways that led Lind to pursue this strategy.
Suddenly I realized that he was still staring sternly at me from the podium.
Even though it had been ten days since we first met, I felt like this was the first moment I’d truly looked him in the face. Lind always seemed blander, less distinct when put next to Kibaou, but his sharply slanted eyes had a powerful strength behind them now.
As far as I knew, he had never truly let his ugliest, most basic emotions explode outward in public since that one occasion: when he demanded to know why I let Diavel die, right after the battle with Illfang.
The next time I saw him, Lind had dyed his hair blue and donned silver armor, just like the late knight, and assumed control of the blue group. Perhaps he chose that path out of respect for Diavel, or a feeling of rivalry, of desire to surpass his mentor. Perhaps he actually wanted to be Diavel.
That third option’s gonna be pretty tough, Lind, I thought.
Diavel was a man of contradictions, someone who sought to lead the best players in the game while hiding the fact that he himself was a beta tester. He was playing a role that could easily see him hoisted by his own petard, but that also made him strong and a fascinating individual.
It occurred to me that if SAO had not turned into the deadly trap it was now, he might have been a great PVPer. The name Diavel came from the Italian word for “devil,” Argo told me, but if that was the reason behind his name choice, what drove him to call himself a knight? I didn’t know, of course, and pretending that I did was a disgrace to his memory.
At any rate, Diavel left Aincrad entirely without revealing a number of truths to his friends, and no one could fill his absence.
As though sensing my line of thought, Lind’s stare grew even sharper. He continued, “So you have no intention of being involved in any guild. Do I have that correct, Kirito?”
“Sure, that works. I’ll still take part in the boss fights, of course…assuming you let me.”
The guild leader nodded a few times at my answer. “Understood. We will discuss the matter of the boss at the next meeting. That is all I wanted to know.”
I sighed with relief once his gaze left me and sat back down on the stone steps.
Next, he turned to Agil’s group to ask if they had any intention of joining either guild, but all four of them declined. It seemed to me like they were going to make their own guild, but Lind did not ask about that. In the end, the DKB and ALS both wound up with an even eighteen members. There might be ferocious competition for new members between them, but as long as it swelled the ranks of the frontline clearers, that was a welcome development.
I’m glad that’s over, I thought to myself, then realized something.
I had answered for myself during that public interrogation, but I never checked with Asuna to see how she felt. She had her hood so low and was staying so quiet, it was as if she was testing out her Hiding skill, and I’d totally forgotten about her presence. Lind asked me and Agil; why didn’t he check with Asuna as well?
I turned left to look at her. Her hands and legs were perfectly still and aligned, just as she’d sat during the first meeting down in Tolbana. The profile I saw peeking out from her hood was calm, and she didn’t appear to be upset.
“Um…” I started, then swallowed what I was going to say. There was a pale fire smoldering in her narrowed eyes.
She was more than a little upset.
The one player who could deal the most damage per second out of all forty-two present was burning with a righteous fire that threatened to consume her entire being.
“Let’s head into the next topic. I’d like to ask Kibaou to lead the ceremonies now.”
Kibaou stood up, sensing that it was finally his turn, but I was not watching him. My eyes were frozen at a random spot in space, neither on the stage nor on Asuna’s face.
We’d been party members and travel companions for the last several days. Even I could sense that she was incredibly angry.
But I could not immediately discern why. There must be three potential reasons: (1) me, (2) Lind, (3) Kibaou. But I had no idea which one of the three it was.
Reason (3) was probably out. Asuna did not think much of Kibaou—when we nearly crossed his path in the cave this morning, she made a face of disgust—but all he’d done so far at this meeting was introduce himself, then sit in a chair the entire time.
I wanted to believe that (1) wasn’t true. It was wrong of me to declare no intention of joining a guild without seeing how she felt first, but she would probably have interrupted and made her anger clear if she really felt that way. Plus, the smoldering flames in her eyes were trained at a point directly over the stage several dozen fee
t away.
Based on the process of elimination, the target of her glare had to be (2) Lind. Most likely, it was something in the DKB leader’s speech that had made her furious.
Even as I considered these options, Kibaou was theatrically gesturing to the crowd.
“Listen up, we’re lookin’ ta finish this floor in the span of a week! That means gettin’ to the labyrinth in four days and beatin’ the boss in another two! Our best option to make that happen is numbers! We can’t keep up this pace with only forty-whatsit folks every time! We gotta get out there and recruit folks what got a bone to pick with this damn game!”
The members of the crowd dressed in green roared with approval at this statement. Increasing the strength of the frontline group was a crucial task, to be sure, but taking on new members and increasing the speed of our conquest were contradictory goals. The harder these two guilds tried to push the frontier forward, the further they left those down in the Town of Beginnings in the dust. Orlando’s Legend Braves had attempted that upgrading scam specifically to close the stark level gap between them and the best players.
But that aside, I had a more pressing duty at the moment. I needed to prevent Asuna from tearing Lind a new one. She was keeping herself under control for now, but the moment the meeting ended, she would leap up and confront him. The other DKB members would be furious, and it would also close the book on her eligibility to join the guilds, which would gladly welcome her if she just asked.
I tuned out Kibaou’s lengthy speech, turned to my left, and steeled myself to speak. But before I could get the words out, her voice emerged from the hood, strained and gravelly.
“You can’t stop me. I’ve been able to resist what he says before, but this time he’s crossed the line, and I’m going to speak my mind.”
“…By ‘this time,’ you mean how we’d have to join separate guilds?” I asked, just to be sure, but Asuna did not respond with a yes or no—probably because she thought it went without saying—and pressed on, her voice even harder.
“Whether I join a guild or not and who I hang around with or not are my choice. I might be able to put up with his pushy attitude and speeches, but I can tell that deep down, he believes it’s his job to guide others and tell them what to do. He believes that giving people hard orders will ultimately be to their benefit. He even believes that what he’s doing is some kind of self-sacrifice.”
“…”
I felt a cold sweat break out on my back, even though I knew she wasn’t talking about me. If I ever caught wind that someone said these things about me, the withering criticism would made me sulk in an inn room for a week.
But if Asuna’s remarks were accurate, then Lind’s convoluted scheme to prevent me from making my own guild wasn’t meant to firm up his own leadership of the playerbase, but as an attempt to guide me into my proper place as a player. He thought that wearing a blue uniform and taking part in the frontline community would reform me. I would be reborn from shunned beater to respected member.
That would indeed be overstepping the boundaries of his responsibility, but on the other hand, I felt like Asuna might be overthinking things. She continued on as if hearing my thoughts aloud.
“I know how it goes. I’ve been hearing those words on the other side ever since I was a kid.”
“…!”
I held my breath. Asuna almost never talked about her life back in the real world—in fact, this might be the first time.
She’d described her motive for picking up her sword and leaving the Town of Beginnings: “For me to be myself.” I probably didn’t fully understand what that phrase meant yet, but her resistance to Lind’s orders meant that they would prevent Asuna from being herself. And that had to be more important to Asuna than hanging around in an ambitious guild.
However.
However…
Even as I was lost in thought, Kibaou’s impassioned speech was reaching its climax onstage. He challenged us to set the next town as our goal for tomorrow and read the most important pieces of information from the latest edition of Argo’s strategy guide. Even anti-tester Kibaou was just barely able to accept the guides as “trusted secondary sources.” It felt awfully convenient to me, but if that helped justify Argo’s position in being independent from the frontline crowd, that was a good thing.
Still, it was important to prevent any situation in which Asuna might draw the ire of the others. Kibaou’s speech was about to end, and she was preparing to go after Lind as soon as it finished.
Asuna had qualities that I didn’t possess. She had the qualities of a leader meant to guide a great number of players. I didn’t want to let her dash that possibility on the rocks by antagonizing the majority here at the very start of the game. Then again, I’d done that very thing right after the first boss fight…
Suddenly I realized one very important truth and held my breath again.
It wasn’t a coincidence. This clash with Lind, the self-professed leader of the top players in the game, was inevitable. As long as Asuna worked with me, it was bound to happen at some point. I was a beater, and I used my store of knowledge from the beta to help myself, and Asuna as my partner, gain a lead over the other frontier players. What was the Chivalric Rapier at her waist if not proof of that fact?
I felt disappointment and anger that I had just now realized this obvious truth, as well as a powerful doubt and hesitation. I bit my lip.
Up onstage, Kibaou theatrically gazed in a full circle around the meeting grounds and prepared to finish up.
“…And that’s why, from now on, whichever guild spots the boss chamber first gets ta call the shots in the battle. If there ain’t no further questions…which I assume there ain’t, then that brings our first strategy meetin’ of the third floor to a close. Let’s finish it out with a cheer!”
Seeing that Kibaou had raised a defiant fist in the air, Lind reluctantly got to his feet. At the same time, Asuna leaned forward. Her skinny legs tensed, preparing to leap forward.
“…We’re gonna crush this boss within a week!!”
“Yeah!!” the crowd roared in response. I held out my left hand and clutched her wrist.
Her hood turned to me and she growled, “Don’t try to stop me.”
“Sorry, I have to.”
“I don’t care if he…I don’t care if all of those guild people hate me. I have no intention of joining them. I’d rather go back down to the Town of Beginnings than sit here and take that nonsense,” she claimed boldly. A breeze ruffled her hood and the red light of the sunset caught her hazel eyes, shining like two shooting stars.
I stared right back into those burning pits of fire and shook my head.
“Don’t do it, Asuna. You can’t antagonize them.”
I sucked in a deep breath, preparing to tell her that we ought to split apart.
I knew full well that this was the kind of thing Asuna hated most: a pushy, heavy-handed act supposedly done for the sake of the other person. But at this point, I had no other words to use. I couldn’t let Asuna make herself the enemy of the main player force in the game, even if it meant that she hated, shunned, and insulted me, never to adventure at my side again.
It was the absolute limit of a solo player.
The fact that no one could save you.
SAO was programmed with a depressing number of negative status effects. Stunning, paralysis, poison, bleeding, blindness, dizziness, et cetera…These things could be overcome with the help of friends in a group, but they all threatened the life of any solo adventurer. In a normal game, where a player could be revived at any time, it might be worth the risk to play solo. But in this extremely deadly game, where a single mistake could be the end of everything, the only reason I was able to play alone in the first two floors was my stock of knowledge from the beta test.
That lifeline would last me to only the tenth floor. Eventually, I’d be forced to survive in unfamiliar maps against unfamiliar monsters. Already, the things I knew about the boss monster
s had been proven insufficient. As the dangers increased exponentially, working with a full party or a guild would be crucial. But the longer she spent with me, the more Asuna risked falling into my position—or one even more perilous.
I had to tell her. It was time to break apart the temporary partnership that had sprung into existence with a Windwasp hunting competition. She had to swallow her anger at Lind and Kibaou and, if not soon, eventually join a guild, whether the DKB, ALS, or someone else.
But it was as though my throat resisted the order to turn the air in my lungs into words.
Asuna met my gaze in silence. Just seconds ago, her eyes had been burning red with rage, but now they were filled with something else that defied my understanding.
The other players in the square roared with enthusiasm, then broke off into smaller groups and chattered excitedly. Agil’s group was seated in a wall in front of us, so no one noticed or interrupted our silent tension, but it also couldn’t last forever.
I gritted my teeth and finally managed to make my stiff throat produce something…but what emerged was not what I expected in the least.
“If…if I died today…what would you do?”
Even though she couldn’t have expected that question, her expression didn’t change an ounce, as though she knew it was coming.
“Nothing would change. I’d still run as far as I could go.” She paused, then asked, “And you? What would you do if I died?”
Despite asking her that very question just seconds ago, I had no immediate answer.
What would I do after Asuna died and all traces of her existence disappeared from Aincrad? I’d certainly return to being a solo player, but I couldn’t imagine what I would feel and think after it happened.
Again, very suddenly, I realized one simple truth.
I was pulling Asuna away from the main group and into a high-risk environment. Of that there was no doubt. But there was only one reason I was doing that: I didn’t want her to die.