Chapter 311: Chapter 12: Extortion
Red-Wine Rat Stew: Simmered using A-Grade or higher red wine paired with rat meat of any quality; the finished product lets anyone tell at a glance that it’s rat soup.
"..."
Who on earth would want something like this!
For Asuna, who was scared even of frogs, there could be no deeper malice than this.
Her S-Grade dish had slipped right out from under her nose. She could already feel Kayaba Akihiko’s damnable spite, making her toil for half a day for nothing.
"Ah-om~"
Well, it wasn’t entirely for nothing.
Setting the S-Grade dish aside for the moment, she calmed down and thought over what the Commander had just said. Although the witch-versus-shrine-maiden mismatch had made her assume at first that he’d simply gotten it wrong, every one of this little thing’s quirks did differ somewhat from a normal NPC’s.
An ordinary NPC definitely wouldn’t flash an HP bar, and certainly wouldn’t open a player’s inventory to steal things outright, and the name in the quest log was still that baffling garble.
"Ah-om, ah-om~"
What’s more, under normal circumstances an NPC would absolutely never enter the interior of a player’s base—not even a temporarily rented lodging.
Asuna sat in a chair, staring pensively at Yimi’s little face. This NPC, who by rights should have left after handing over the reward, had followed her home the moment she dangled food as bait, making her feel like an actual creepy auntie.
This floor’s village specialty snack, the White Bun, wasn’t a real steamed bun but a white spherical pastry. Nine of them were packed into a small box, and Yimi had grabbed one in each hand; she’d only just bitten a notch out of the left-hand one before starting in on the one in her right.
She’d polished off the fish soup and fried meatballs and could still eat this much. It had been ages since then, though—but whether an NPC even had a sense of fullness wasn’t a subject she ought to be researching.
That she could enter a player’s base and be drawn in by good food meant, in effect, that she could be kept at the Knights of the Blood’s base.
Except she couldn’t be sure Yimi could leave Floor 56, and the Knights of the Blood had only just finished moving; suddenly moving again would mess with the members’ morale a bit.
Besides, for now this NPC hadn’t shown any value worth having the Knights of the Blood cluster around her on the utterly unremarkable Floor 56. Ever since Asuna completed the feeding quest, no new quest had appeared, and the quest reward that had originally read "None" had been replaced by that pot.
Seeing Asuna staring at her, Yimi assumed she was fretting over the snacks, and grabbed one to hand her. "Here."
"..."
An ordinary NPC definitely wouldn’t have this strong an interactivity.
Asuna reached out and gently pinched her cheek, feeling the smooth, soft texture.
Yimi shook her head in refusal and stuffed the whole remaining snack in her hand into her mouth, little cheeks bulging as she chewed.
"A girl eating in such a rough way—back where I’m from, you’d absolutely get scolded for it." This was more of an idle remark.
Because she wasn’t really in a position to say so. The biggest upside of this game was not having to face strict home discipline, and she’d stuffed her own face more than once in here too.
"I did not—smack my lips." Yimi retorted.
"But eating like that gets crumbs all over you, doesn’t it? Ah... forget I said that last part." Asuna had forgotten—no matter what, SAO couldn’t possibly be detailed to that degree.
Letting you eat food bite by bite was already a very fine-grained touch; the fish soup Yimi had spilled on herself earlier would probably vanish on its own if left alone.
But Yimi did catch the gist of what she meant. "Then how do I eat?"
"Like this?" Asuna cupped a White Bun and, following the etiquette she’d learned since childhood, chewed elegantly in small bites.
Eating without utensils was considered by many a mark of poor manners, but plenty of things looked even more unseemly with mismatched utensils.
Yimi clumsily copied her.
"..."
Asuna looked out the window. Those NPCs who’d appeared in this or that spot yesterday were, today, still moving about in the very same places.
Yes, lifelike NPCs like this had appeared before, too.
"A vacation, huh."
Asuna leaned back in her chair. It really did seem like she hadn’t rested in a very long time.
Every time she thought of how much of her schooling she’d already fallen behind on, and how furious her mother would be once she got back, she couldn’t fully let herself unwind.
Her mother was an extremely strict person. Even after she’d earned a straight-A evaluation, she’d still say things like, "That’s only what you’re supposed to do."
In one year, this game had barely been cleared about halfway, and the floors ahead would only grow more difficult. The time to clear it certainly wouldn’t be as simple as just another year passing—and that was the optimistic view.
Maybe at some floor she wouldn’t be able to hold on any longer. Maybe by the final floor it would come down to the Clearers having only a single person left.
Such things had happened before. The originally active clearing group had held no shadow of the Knights of the Blood; the two great guilds that made up the early clearing group had never recovered after the blow they took on Floor 25.
The once-outstanding Asuna might, once she got out, have to consider at a university student’s age which high school to even apply to. This was why matters of reality were a forbidden subject players couldn’t ask each other about. Beyond being impolite, the bigger reason was that it drove people, step by step, toward despair.
Asuna curled her fingers.
"The rest—they’re all for you." Yimi nudged the White Buns left in the box.
Asuna glanced over. Of the nine, she’d left her four—more than half, one over an even split. Something seemed off.
She looked at Yimi again. Her eyes were still fixed unblinkingly on the remaining White Buns, wearing the look of someone who hadn’t eaten nearly enough.
Asuna helplessly pushed them back in front of her. "It’s fine if you finish them all, you know."
"Not eating any more. The rest are all for you. I’m going to sleep." Yimi rubbed her eyelids.
Because the creepy auntie looked so unhappy, the kitty was magnanimously letting her have the food.
Yimi kicked off her shoes, took off her hair clip, climbed onto the room’s only bed, and started her afternoon nap all on her own.
She felt like she’d forgotten something, but eating and sleeping were the two biggest priorities. She’d leave it for now.
"She really fell asleep?"
Asuna stood, bent to look at her face. Even as sleep slackened her features, it didn’t detract from the little girl’s exquisite face; that ability to fall asleep so fast was thoroughly enviable.
She’d wanted to try triggering the quest again—and she hadn’t even asked her name.
On some impulse she couldn’t name, she gently rubbed Yimi’s head. The texture was better than she’d imagined; she hadn’t had the nerve to touch it while the girl was awake.
No—keeping up her dignity outside was one thing, but if she couldn’t even show her true self facing an NPC alone, that would be too exhausting.
The shoes had been kicked off every which way, too.
Asuna crouched to set the little red leather shoes neatly in place.
Reimu’s shrine-maiden outfit came with two kinds of footwear: one was the traditional shrine-maiden high geta sandals, the other ordinary little leather shoes. Kirisame Marisa, not being a shrine maiden, naturally couldn’t understand those foot-chafing sandals, so she’d prepared the little leather shoes for Yimi.
Upon touching the shoes, Asuna saw a string of stats: [Scarlet Murderer–Style Shoes]
Bonus: /
Effect: Movement speed greatly increased when hunting down non-human creatures
Asuna’s hand twitched.
What kind of character setup did this child have in this game??
No—if she was a murderer, why did she mainly target non-human creatures?
Equipment with special skills was extremely rare in the whole game.
Asuna stood and looked at the hair clip Yimi had set by the pillow.
[Hair Clip Modeled After the Scarlet Murderer’s Large Bow]
Bonus: /
Effect: [Extortion] When a Duel ends, on winning you may take one valuable item from your opponent; on losing, you randomly receive one of your opponent’s items. Cooldown: 24 h
"..."
The Commander was right. This NPC had to be kept.
Asuna fingered the hair clip and tried equipping it.
She had no intention of claiming it as her own—offending an NPC could well slam the door on all future trades, and snatching a child’s belongings was frankly too contemptible.
She only wanted to see whether there were any other restrictions once equipped. It seemed merely to occupy the helmet slot, with none of a helmet’s weight; she wondered if the thing could be traded for food.
Asuna had just gone to take it off when, from the window, she spotted a certain someone who’d once beaten her sprinting frantically down the street outside. Having lost Yimi on Floor 50, he’d chased all the way up to Floor 56, because Kirito wanted an information broker to help him find someone.
The sight of him instantly soured Asuna’s mood. After a moment’s thought, she walked out the door and caught up to him. "What are you looking for?"
"Nothing much—"
Kirito, about to conceal it, caught sight of the bow on top of Asuna’s head.
"Asuna, where did that thing on your head come from?" Kirito’s expression suddenly went rigid.
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