Early and Late

  After several extremely tense minutes, in which Asuna quietly finished her meal, she muttered, “…He’s not coming.”

  “Er, y-yeah. Well, Schmitt made it sound like he doesn’t visit every day. Plus, I kind of doubt that Grimlock’s going to show up in his black robe to chow on some grub, right after committing a PK…We might need to stake out this place for two or three days,” I said quickly, checking the time. It had only been thirty minutes since we started. I was ready to wait until I saw Grimlock, no matter how many hours or days it took, but Her Excellency the Vice Commander might have different plans.

  I glanced over at her again, but Asuna was sunk deep into her chair, and not about to get up anytime soon.

  Belatedly, I realized that my statement could be interpreted as “two or three nights staying here,” and my palms flooded with sweat. But then, Asuna broke the silence.

  “Hey, Kirito.”

  “Y-yes?!”

  What she said was fortunately—or unfortunately—totally unrelated to my statement.

  “What would you have done? If you were in Golden Apple and they got a super-rare item like that, what would you have said?”

  “…”

  After several seconds of shocked silence, then several seconds of hard thought, I said, “Good question…But trouble like that is why I fly solo in the first place…In the games I played before SAO, a number of guilds I was in fell apart due to members pilfering the best items and selling them for profit…”

  It was an unavoidable fact that one of the big motivating factors for a majority of MMO gamers was the feeling of superiority over the rest of the populace. And the easiest measurement of superiority was strength—defeating powerful monsters or other players with upgraded stats and powerful gear. That pleasure could not be found anywhere outside of online games. The reason that I was spending countless hours grinding for levels was none other than to enjoy the feeling of superiority inherent in being a front-line player.

  If I was in a guild now, and a phenomenal piece of gear dropped for the party, and it was perfectly suited for another member of the guild—would I be able to say, “You ought to use this”?

  “…No, I couldn’t,” I muttered, shaking my head. “I might not be able to say that I wanted to use it, but I’m not enough of a saint to happily hand it over to someone else. If I were a member of Golden Apple, I would have joined the pro-selling side. What about you?”

  Her answer was instantaneous: “It belongs to the person who got the drop.”

  “Eh?”

  “That’s the rule in our guild. Any random drop when in a party is the property of whomever got it. And there’s no combat log in SAO, so there’s no public record of who got what. It’d have to be announced on the honor system. So the only way to avoid people keeping secrets and causing trouble is to make it policy. Plus…”

  She paused, her gaze on the pub door softening somewhat.

  “That system actually makes the concept of marriage here more meaningful. You know that people who get married share a common inventory, right? The moment you get married, you can’t hide things from your spouse. It also means that any player who tries to steal items from the guild can never get married to a fellow member. A shared inventory is a very pragmatic system, but I also find it quite romantic.”

  I blinked in surprise at the note of longing I detected in her voice. A tension that made no sense rose within me, and I thoughtlessly stammered, “Y-yeah, that’s a good point. W-well, if I’m ever in a party with you, I’ll be sure not to hog all the drops.”

  Asuna’s chair slammed backward. Without the lights on, I couldn’t make out her face very well, but in the pale moonlight, I saw the Flash go through a rotation of varying expressions. She raised her right hand as if to strike and shouted, “A-are you nuts?! You can wait decades, and that day will never come! Ah, w-well, that’s in regards to being in a party with you, of course. I mean, look…Just keep watching the pub! What’ll we do if you miss him?!”

  Once she had the bellowing out of her system, Asuna turned away in a huff. As I was making sure not to take my eyes off the door for more than a second while we talked, her accusation stung. I mumbled a pathetic rebuttal that I was watching, and stopped to think.

  When the ring that caused the downfall of Golden Apple dropped, who was it who scored the item?

  Perhaps it was a pointless question now. But if it was desirable enough to kill their leader over it, surely just concealing it from the start would’ve been easier. That would mean whoever announced they had won the drop couldn’t be the killer.

  I grimaced, thinking I should have asked Schmitt when I had the chance. Neither Asuna nor I were registered friends of his, so we couldn’t send him a message to check. There were instant messages that could be sent to any player whose name you knew, but it required being on the same floor, and had a very short cap on length.

  It could easily happen the next time I saw Schmitt. We weren’t chasing the culprit of the ring killing of half a year ago, but the one responsible for the ongoing safe-haven murders. Still, I couldn’t get over it. I took out the list Schmitt had made for me.

  Asuna was still looking away with a weird expression on her face, so I asked her not to take her eyes off the pub, and I examined the list of Golden Apple members handwritten on the parchment.

  Griselda. Grimlock. Schmitt, Yolko, Kains…The scrawled list of names was eight long. And at least three of them were no longer present in the floating castle.

  We couldn’t allow for any more victims. We had to stop Grimlock’s revenge and find the logic behind the safe-haven murders.

  I was about to put the memo back into my item storage, but right at the moment the small sheaf of parchment was about to be converted back into a digital storage, one particular point drew my notice.

  “…Huh…?”

  I took a closer look. The detail-focusing system kicked in, refining the texture of the letters on the parchment to bring them into sharper detail.

  “Um…what does this mean…?” I mumbled.

  Without taking her eyes off the pub door, Asuna asked, “What is it?”

  But I didn’t have the presence of mind to answer. My brain was working feverishly, trying to decipher the meaning, the reason, the intention of what I was seeing.

  Several seconds later, I shouted, “Aaa…aaaah!!” and leaped up from my chair. The sheet of parchment trembled, reflecting the weight of the shock that overwhelmed me.

  “I see…So that’s what it means!!” I moaned.

  In a voice made of equal parts hesitation and frustration, Asuna hissed, “What? What did you figure out?!”

  “I’ve been…We’ve been…”

  I struggled to squeeze the words out of my dry throat; I clenched my eyes.

  “We’ve been missing the entire picture all along. We thought we understood, but we were looking at the wrong thing. There’s no weapon, skill, or loophole behind this whole safe-haven-PK thing…There was never any way to begin with!!”

  9

  Later, I got this background to the story.

  Schmitt, defensive team leader for the Divine Dragon Alliance and notable front-line figure, didn’t go to bed after returning to his chambers in the safety of the guild headquarters. He didn’t even remove his armor.

  His room was deep within the stone castle—fortress, really—and without a window. Not only that, the building was impossible to enter for nonmembers, so he was perfectly safe as long as he was in his room. But no matter how much he told himself that, he couldn’t help but stare at the doorknob.

  The moment he took his eyes off it, would it turn without a sound? Would the silent, shadowy, hooded figure of the grim reaper sneak in and stand behind him without him realizing it?

  Others thought of him as a stalwart, fearless tank, but as a matter of fact, the motivation that kept him among the ranks of the top players of the game was none other than the fear of death itself.

  On the day we were all trap
ped in this game, a year and a half ago, he stayed in the center square of the Town of Beginnings and thought. No, agonized. What could he do to avoid dying? The most surefire means was not to take a step out of the city. There was absolute protection within the purview of the Anti-Criminal Code, so there was no fear of losing a single pixel of his HP—the numerical representation of his life.

  But as an athlete in real life, Schmitt understood that the rules could change at any time. Who could state for a certainty that SAO’s rule about the towns being absolutely safe would remain constant, to the very moment the game was beaten? What if one day, the code simply stopped working, and all manner of monsters poured into town? Those players who never stepped out of the Town of Beginnings and never earned a single experience point would be completely helpless.

  If he were going to survive, he needed to be stronger. And in a safe way, without any risk. After a full day of pondering his position, Schmitt chose to be “tough.”

  First, he went to an armory and bought the toughest-looking armor and shield that his purse would allow, then used the remainder to purchase a long polearm. Out of the many impromptu parties soliciting members at the north gate, he applied to join the one that promised the safest activity. Their first hunt involved ten people surrounding and killing the weakest monsters in SAO: small boars.

  Since then, Schmitt chose to make up for the low pay of such activity with sheer time. His leveling pace couldn’t match the beaters, who played in small parties or solo, risking powerful foes for great reward, but his never-ending fixation on “toughness” eventually took him to the rank of team leader in the prestigious DDA guild.

  His hard work was worth it: Schmitt’s maximum HP, armor strength, and various defensive skills were almost certainly the greatest to be found in all of Aincrad.

  With his massive guard lance in one hand and a tower shield in the other, he knew he could handle front-facing attacks from three or four mobs of his level for a good thirty minutes. To Schmitt, those who wore paper-thin leather armor or focused on damage-dealing with non-defensive weapons—even certain solo players dressed all in black, whom he’d met just minutes before—might as well have been insane. In truth, the build with the lowest possibility of death was a tank covered in thick armor. And because they sacrificed power to do that, it was vital that they join a large party to make use of their talents.

  In any case, Schmitt had finally achieved the ultimate toughness, the only thing that could nullify his fear of death. Or so he had thought.

  But vast sums of HP, high-level armor, defensive skills, and all other manner of systematic defenses meant nothing to a killer who could bypass them. And after all this time and effort, such a person was coming after him.

  He didn’t really believe it was a ghost. But even that wasn’t a certainty anymore. The grim reaper had slipped through the absolute rule of the Anti-Criminal Code like black mist and callously, easily taken two lives with wimpy little spears and daggers. Was that not the work of a digital ghost, the aftermath of all of her rage and resentment, imprinted into the NerveGear?

  In that case, solid fortress walls, that heavy lock on the door, and the protection of the guild building meant nothing.

  She was coming. She would come for him tonight, after he had fallen asleep. And with a third barbed weapon, she would stab him and steal his life.

  Schmitt sat on his bed, head held in his silver gauntlets, and thought desperately.

  There was only one way to escape her revenge. He would beg forgiveness—get on his knees, press his forehead to the ground, groveling and apologizing, until her anger abated. He would admit to his one crime—a means to find greater strength and toughness, and use it as a launching pad to a better guild—and repent with all of his heart. If he did this, even a real ghost would surely forgive him. He had been manipulated. He had been taken for a ride, tempted into a tiny little crime—in fact, it wasn’t even a crime, just a bit of poor manners. He couldn’t have realized what a tragedy it would lead to.

  Schmitt unsteadily got to his feet, opened his inventory, and materialized one of the tons of teleport crystals he kept for emergencies. He clutched it with weak fingers, took a deep breath, and in a hoarse voice, mumbled, “Teleport: Labergh.”

  His sight filled with blue light. When it subsided, he was standing amid the night.

  It was after ten o’clock, and on a floor far removed from most player activity, so the nineteenth-floor teleport square was completely empty. The stores around were all shuttered, and there were no NPCs walking about, so it almost felt like he was out in the open wilderness, despite being in town.

  Just half a year ago, Golden Apple had a small guild home on the outskirts of this town. It should have been a familiar sight, but Schmitt felt alienated, like the town was shunning him.

  His body trembled in fear underneath his thick armor. He walked on unsteady legs for the edge of town. After twenty minutes out of the town, he came to a small hill. It was in the open, of course, not protected by the Anti-Criminal Code. But Schmitt had a very firm reason for being there. It was his only means to escape the wrath of the robed harbinger of death.

  He dragged his resisting legs up to the top of the hill and found what he was looking for beneath a single twisted tree at the top. Schmitt kept his distance, quaking all the while.

  It was a weathered, mossy gravestone. The grave of Griselda, lady swordsman and leader of Golden Apple. The pale moonlight, which emanated from nowhere in particular, drew a shadow of the cross on the dry ground. Barren branches overhead creaked in the occasional breeze.

  The tree and grave were just environmental details, objects placed by a designer to create an aesthetic effect, and nothing deeper. But on the day Golden Apple disbanded, a few days after Griselda’s death, the remaining seven players had decided to make that her grave, and they stuck the longsword that was their memento of her into the earth. Technically, they just laid it at the foot of the grave and allowed the durability to slowly run out until it vanished.

  So there was no name on the grave. But there was no other place to go to apologize to Griselda.

  Schmitt fell to his knees and crawled miserably over to the grave. He pressed his forehead to the sandy ground, his teeth chattering, as he used all of his willpower to open his mouth, emitting a voice that was quite clear, all things considered.

  “I’m sorry…I apologize…Forgive me, Griselda! I…I didn’t think that would happen…I never imagined that it would lead to you getting murdered!!”

  “Really…?”

  It was a voice. A woman’s voice, oddly echoing, bouncing off the ground from above.

  Trying desperately to retain his quickly vanishing consciousness, Schmitt looked upward.

  From the shadows of the gnarled branches came a silent figure dressed in black. Specifically, a hooded black robe. With dangling sleeves. The contents of the hood were invisible in the darkness of night.

  But Schmitt felt the cold gaze emanating from that depth. He held his hands over his mouth to trap in a bloodcurdling scream, then repeated, “I-it’s true. I didn’t hear any details. I just…I just did what I was told…It was just a little…Just a little…”

  “What did you do…? What did you do to me, Schmitt…?”

  With bulging eyes, Schmitt caught sight of a dark, slender curve, sliding out of the sleeve of the robe.

  It was a sword. But an incredibly thin one—an estoc, a one-handed close-range piercing weapon that hardly anyone bothered to use. The conical blade, which looked like a very large, long needle, was growing a spiral of delicate thorns.

  It was the third barbed weapon.

  A tiny shriek escaped from Schmitt’s throat. He slammed his head against the ground, over and over and over.

  “I…I just—! On the day…that it was voted we’d sell the ring, a piece of paper and crystal just showed up in my belt pouch…and there were directions on it…”

  “From whom, Schmitt?”

  This time it
was a man’s voice.

  “Whose orders were they…?”

  Schmitt froze in place, his neck suddenly tense. His head felt as heavy as iron, but somehow, he lifted his head for just an instant. A second grim reaper had just appeared from the shadows of the branches. It was wearing an identical black robe. This one was slightly taller than the other.

  “…Grimlock…?” Schmitt just barely whispered, his face downward once more. “Did…did you die, too…?”

  The new reaper ignored this question and took a silent step forward. From the hood came a voice dripping and twisted.

  “Who…? Who was manipulating you…?”

  “I…I don’t know! I swear!!” Schmitt shrieked. “The…the memo just said…follow the leader. Wh-when she checked in to an inn and left to eat dinner, I’d sneak into her room and save the location with the corridor crystal, th-then place it in the guild’s shared storage…Th-that’s all I did! I didn’t lay a finger on Griselda! I-I never…I never thought she’d be k-k-killed, just lose the ring…I never thought that would happen!”

  The two grim reapers did not move a muscle as he pleaded his case. The night breeze stirred the dried branches of the tree as it passed, along with the hems of their robes.

  Even in the grips of his terror, Schmitt was reviewing a memory burned into the recesses of his brain.

  On that day half a year ago, when he first pulled the parchment out of his pouch, he thought it was ridiculous—but was also surprised at how effective a move it was.

  Inn room doors were automatically locked by the system, but by default, they would unlock for friends and guildmates, except when the room guest was asleep. By placing a corridor crystal marker there while she was gone, they could sneak into her room even when she was asleep. After that, it was as simple as making a trade request, moving her arm to press the accept button, then selecting the ring and hitting “trade.”

  There was the danger of being detected, but Schmitt innately sensed that this was the only way to steal an item within the safe zone. The reward listed at the end of the memo was half of the selling value of the ring. If he succeeded, he would instantly get four times the money, and if he failed and the leader actually woke up in the middle of the trade, she’d only see the person who gave him the memo, the actual thief. He could just ignore any accusations from the thief and pretend he didn’t know anything. Sneaking into a bedroom and setting portal coordinates left no traces.