novelonline Chapter 599: Solemnly promise that no one will die in this incident
Chapter 599: Solemnly promise that no one will die in this incident
Chapter 599: Solemnly promise that no one will die in this incident
After Kobayashi picked up the dagger and looked at it for a while, Kirito appeared from the other side of the street with an unwilling look on his face.
"Haha, you lost him, didn't you?"
"Damn it, if only I knew where he teleported to."
"It's impossible. Although SAO's transfer crystal can be controlled by voice, it is not limited to voice. Whether it is a window or brain waves, as long as you have the thought and hold the transfer crystal in your hand, you can use it. So no matter what, you can't catch up with that person."
"Tsk."
Kirito was speechless with reluctance.
Besides, it’s not that Asuna didn’t try to stop him, but even if she tried to stop him, he didn’t listen to her advice, so it was predictable that she would return empty-handed.
"Let's not talk about this for now."
Kirito walked forward, stared at the dagger in Kobayashi's hand, and said, "This must be the weapon that killed Miss Yako. It's really uncomfortable."
"Yes, its design concept is the same as the bloody spear that killed Kainz. Even without identification, we know that they were made by the same person." Kobayashi threw the dagger to him.
Kirito looked at the dagger in his hand with an unwilling expression.
The knife is made entirely of the same metal and is heavy despite its small size. The sides of the razor-thin blade are engraved with barbs reminiscent of shark teeth.
"Let's go, let's go up first."
Kobayashi and Kirito walked up to the second floor of the hotel, introduced themselves, and turned the handle. After getting permission from the owner of the room, the door opened.
The two of them ran into an angry Asuna.
“You two really are…really…!”
One of them recklessly ran after the murderer, and the other jumped out of the room, scaring her one after another.
Kirito looked at Krillin in surprise after learning that he had jumped from the room. Although he would not be hurt, pain was inevitable. Could it be that he had just jumped off the building because he was bored?
"So, what was the result?"
"No, he used teleportation to escape. Not to mention his appearance, even his voice and whether he is a man or a woman are hard to tell."
Kirito shook his head.
Asuna frowned slightly and asked, "Could that person be Grimrock? If it's what Miss Yako said..."
She also began to suspect that the murderer was Grimrock.
But Schmidt trembled and groaned in denial, "No. The man in black on the roof is not Grimrock. Grimrock is even taller, and... and..."
When he said this, his voice was a little hoarse, but more of it was fear.
"That hooded robe is the president's clothes. She always wears that kind of inconspicuous clothes when she goes out. Oh, right... she was also wearing that dress when she went to sell the ring! Just now... the person just now was the president! She came to take revenge on all of us! That was the president's ghost! Hahahaha——"
He suddenly started laughing like crazy.
"If she's a ghost, she can do anything. PK in the circle should be easy for her. We can just ask the president to defeat the final boss of SAO. She won't die anyway if she has no health points."
Schmidt screamed hysterically.
Kirito threw the dagger in his hand onto the table. As soon as a heavy sound was heard, Schmidt's laughter suddenly stopped, like a doll with a switch turned off.
After staring for a few seconds, she screamed like a little girl again.
“Aa ...
"That's not a ghost. This throwing knife is a real object, just like the spear you put in the prop library. If you don't believe me, you can take it for investigation."
"No, no need! I'll give the spear back to you too!"
Schmidt opened the window tremblingly, but because he was too afraid, he made mistakes several times, but in the end he still materialized the spear. As if to get rid of trouble, he threw out the spear that appeared next to the window.
Kirito raised the corner of his mouth secretly.
Is this guy also a bad guy?
Asuna seemed a little reluctant, she comforted him, "Mr. Schmidt, I don't think that person just now was a ghost. If there really is a ghost, it must be more than just the president of the Golden Apple. The 3,500 people who have died so far should all be unwilling to accept this, right?"
"No, that's not right."
Schmidt lowered his head and shook his head. "Because you don't know her. That person is really strong and calm, but she is very strict with those who lie or are lazy, even more exaggerated than Miss Asuna of the Conqueror Ghost... So if she knew that someone set a trap to kill her, she would never let that person off easily... She would even turn into a ghost to give that person the most severe punishment."
A heavy silence fell over the room.
It seems that President Golden Apple has put a lot of pressure on him, and after going through all these things, his psychological defenses have been damaged.
"Since you think so, there is nothing I can do."
Kirito sighed and said, "No matter if I don't believe in such things, there must be some kind of systematic logic in these two murders in the circle. And I will definitely find that method, so you must cooperate as agreed."
"assist?"
"Next, I hope you can stay in the guild honestly. After all, from what we can see now, if the murderer wants to kill someone, he must at least hit the target with his weapon. If you stay in the guild, at least no strange people will break in."
"Of course! Even if you didn't say that, I would still do it!"
Schmidt started shouting, but his words were lame.
He soon realized this, too.
"It's a bit embarrassing for a player in the strategy group to do this, but I don't want to go out recently... Don't count me in the team when you're strategy-taking the boss, and--"
At this time, his former resolute expression had completely disappeared. The spearman who served as the captain of the Holy Dragon United Guild could only look at them with empty eyes and murmured:
"Please take me back to the guild later."
None of the three laughed at Schmidt for being timid.
From the 59th floor hotel, they went through the transfer door to the 56th floor. Before walking back to the Holy Dragon Union headquarters, the three of them formed a triangle to sandwich the sturdy man who was already eroded by fear. If an unknown person appeared, Kirito and Asuna might rush out reflexively.
Even after passing through the huge gate of the headquarters, Schmidt still had an uneasy expression on his face.
Watching his back as he jogged into the building, Kirito sighed softly.
Asuna bit her lip and whispered, "Ms. Yezi's matter is really regrettable..."
"That's it."
Kirito also answered in a hoarse voice.
Only Xiaolin, whose expression remained the same, chuckled softly.
"Xiao Lin? You don't seem sad at all."
“Why are you sad?”
"Because Mr. Keynes and Miss Yezi..."
"Dead? No, no, no one died in this incident."
"……Aha?"
Asuna looked at Kobayashi in astonishment. Only Kirito seemed to be thinking about something, but he was a little unsure so he didn't say anything and waited for Kobayashi to explain the reason.
Kobayashi's demonstration was simple. He took out a piece of paper from the prop column, tore it off in front of the two people, and scattered it on the street.
If it were the real world, they would definitely be criticized for having no sense of public morality, but this is a game, and soon they exploded into pieces due to being destroyed and disappeared in front of the three people.
"Um???"
Asuna was confused.
Kirito suddenly realized.
"——Is that so! I was wondering what was wrong, so that's how it is! Xiaolin, when did you find out? No, you found out when you were trapping Yako with the thread, right? Oh, and Asuna also said that you jumped down from the second floor, so she wanted to confirm that!"
As expected of Kirito, he understood everything immediately.
Asuna was confused. She quickly asked, "What's going on? Can someone explain it to me?"
"What Xiaolin meant was that Yezi didn't die. Whether it was Kainz or Yezi, what we saw was just the phenomenon that Kainz's character scattered a lot of polygonal fragments, then emitted a blue light and disappeared. Although in the circle, no matter what the player does, the health value will not decrease, but the durability of the items will still decrease.
Just like the paper just now, because it was destroyed, its durability was reduced to the minimum and turned into blue fragments. Do you still remember Ye Zi? At that time, her clothes had been pierced by the dagger, so the dagger did not reduce Ye Zi's health, but the durability of her clothes. "
Asuna, who was originally frowning, suddenly widened her eyes.
Obviously she had discovered that what was flying around was not Ye Zi's body, but her clothes.
"She calculated the time for her clothes to be damaged, and then performed a scene like that, and then immediately fell down and..."
"It was transferred using crystal."
She seemed to understand Xiaolin's purpose of jumping off the building.
"But is there any way to prove this?"
"It's easy. Kirito, don't you have a resurrection crystal? Give it a try."
"Ah."
Kirito took out the resurrection crystal and immediately chose Yako as the target of resurrection.
Asuna asked curiously, "Wait a minute, can't the resurrection crystal only revive players who have died within ten seconds? Even if we use it now, it's too late, right?"
"Hmph, it seems like you've never used a resurrection crystal, Asuna."
"I never got it from the beginning, okay!"
"The effect of the resurrection crystal is that it can only revive players who died within ten seconds, but in fact the prompts it gives are also different. For example, dead players will be shown as unable to be resurrected, and the time of the player's death will be displayed, while players who are not dead will also be prompted that the player is not dead, so..."
"Can it test whether Miss Yezi is dead or not?"
"That's right!"
Kobayashi snapped his fingers, and Kirito shared the window of the resurrection crystal with the two of them. Sure enough, it showed that the player had not died and could not use the crystal.
"Also, Asuna, you and Yako are friends, right? You should be able to see that Yako is not dead."
"Yes, yes, I had forgotten about it... It's great that she is not dead."
Asuna checked her friends list and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that Yako's name was not grayed out.
Rather than being used as a tool, she cares more about not letting the player die due to strange killing methods.
"Wait a minute."
Asuna suddenly thought of something.
"Didn't we personally go to the Black Iron Palace to confirm last night? There was indeed a line through Keynes' name."
"That should be because the spelling of the name is wrong."
"……What's the meaning?"
"Just like my name - Xiaolin, there are many players named Xiaolin, but the pinyin is different."
Xiaolin shared his window.
The above is a conversation between him and Schmidt, in which Schmidt was asked to send him the IDs of other members of the Golden Apple Guild, including Keynes'.
but--
"Hey, Cainz...Caynz?"
"That's right. When we went to check, the ID was Kains. They are not the same person. If you don't believe me..."
Kirito uses the Resurrection Crystal again.
Sure enough, the shared window showed the same thing as Ye Zi, that Keynes was not dead.
"But the time of death is correct, and the cause of death is definitely a penetrating attack... Could it be...?"
"No, no, no, it wasn't Yako and the others who cooperated to kill the K-named Keynes at that time. Think about it, the death record on the monument of life is [April 22, 18:27]. The time is correct, but April 22 in Aincrad was actually the second time yesterday."
“Ah…Is that so?”
Asuna suddenly realized what was going on and was speechless.
In other words, on the same day and at the same time last year, a player named K who had nothing to do with this incident died, and this was the starting point of the plan of Keynes and Yezi. They used the dead to design this elaborate plan.
Kirito also spoke up: "I think they knew about this a long time ago, and used this coincidence to create the illusion of Keynes' death and staged this horrific murder case within the circle."
"Indeed. The deceased's name is pronounced the same as your own, the equipment is destroyed by the continuous damage caused by being penetrated in the circle, and the crystal transfer is used at the same time... Using these three factors, the PK in the circle can be made to look real." Asuna also felt that this plan was too sophisticated.
"And the purpose of doing this is..."
"In order to corner the culprit of the ring incident, so that he would reveal his true colors, Miss Yako and Keynes used their own positions as possible culprits to stage a murder case in which they were killed, creating an imaginary avenger. When this terrifying death god who can ignore the prohibition of crime and PK in the circle appears, the one who will act out of fear is..."
"Keynes."
Xiaolin answered this question.
"That's why you laughed just now."
"I am here to admire the ingenious plan of Keynes and Yezi, which is like the Arabian Nights."
"I think you are just having a bad taste."
Asuna rolled her eyes.
The mystery has been solved, and the person Ye Zi and the others suspected from the beginning was Schmidt, so they targeted him.
"It may be a bit impolite to say this, but if you don't go through crazy leveling or spend a lot of money to update your equipment, you can't join the strategy group at all... So, he is the one who killed the Golden Apple president and stole the ring?"
"do not know."
"Hey!"
"We don't know whether he killed anyone or not, but he did have a motive and a reason. In fact, he did join a large guild and became a member of the Raiders Group."
Kobayashi and Kirito agree on Schmidt.
"What should we do now?"
"Just wait and see what happens."
Xiao Lin sat calmly on the chair and said, "Since Ye Zi and the others didn't tell us the truth, it means they don't want us to get involved. However, their methods are very helpful to me, so I won't pursue the fault of them taking advantage of me."
"...Are you a pleasure monster from somewhere?"
Kirito couldn't help but complain quietly.
(End of this chapter)