The Legend of the Black Swordsman

Yuuki smiled as the Sleeping Knights and Asuna's friends all cheered happily. They were at the teleport gate on floor twenty two, having just arrived from the last boss fight in which they were victorious. Their plan was to go back to Asuna and Kirito's player house for a party to celebrate.

As they walked, joking and laughing with each other, Yuuki couldn't help but be drawn to the figure at the front of the group. Now seemed like a decent time to ask him...

"Hey, Kirito, could I ask you something?"

"Hmm?" he turned to her.

"...Privately."

"Uh, sure." Kirito seemed puzzled by the request, but he obviously had no reason to decline. "Hey, Asuna, Yuuki and I will catch up with you guys later, okay?"

"Eh? Okay then, don't be too long!"

She stepped to the side with Kirito as the rest of the group passed, earning a few curious looks from her friends. When they had disappeared, Kirito sighed tiredly and gestured to a nearby bench. "So, what did you want to ask?"

"Well...I wanted to ask you for a duel." That wasn't all there was to it, of course, but she suddenly felt extremely self-conscious.

"Hmm? Why? We already fought."

She shook her head. "No...you weren't trying." It was more of an accusation than a statement.

Kirito didn't seem to have the desire to deny the accusation. "Why does that matter? I know you weren't giving it your all either."

Yuuki shifted uncomfortably. "I've seen you fight a few times now, and it's so inconsistent. You always seem like you're holding back, and I want to fight you at your best." She chuckled. "I guess I'm competitive that way."

"I'm afraid I can't, and I won't ever be able to," he said sadly.

"...Why?"

With a shake of his head, he stood up. "You'll have to ask the others. I'm sure they'll tell you...but I'm not the right person to tell the story."

"I don't understand."

He chuckled as he looked down at her. "You have that same look in your eyes that Asuna had when I told her how to find you. I admit, our situation isn't quite as unfortunate...but we do have our own secrets." He patted the top of her head and walked away, leaving her alone on the bench trying to ponder what she had heard. What did he mean when he said he wouldn't ever be able to?

After his incredible display when he cut magic with his sword and revealed that he owned the holy sword Excalibur, she had given him a much closer look.

Admittedly, she had felt a little guilty as she investigated him after he had shown such kindness for her—bringing her back to the real world with the little camera that Asuna could wear on her shoulder. In every encounter they had, he had been about as kind to her as a person could be, no matter what kind of mood he was in. They had definitely become friends, so she had hoped that when she asked him to fight her for real he would be more willing.

Regardless, her first point of research was to just search his name on the internet. That brought forth an...unexpected number of results. She quickly learned that he was widely regarded as the game's strongest player, nicknamed 'The Black Swordsman'. Even titans of the game such as the salamander general Eugene had publicly admitted that Kirito was stronger than them.

There was another small group of players who spoke reverently about Kirito. Anytime they mentioned his name, it was always with the most respectful honorifics. She wondered what he had done that caused people to respect him so much. It was especially difficult to discover because anyone who seemed to actually know anything about Kirito tended to word their posts extremely vaguely, not revealing too much.

Just when she was about to go insane from trying to piece it all together, she discovered the replays from the last Bullet of Bullets tournament held in another VRMMO, Gun Gale Online. The more she read about the tournament, the less she believed. Kirito had transferred into GGO, having never played the game before, only two hours before the tournament began. Less than an hour in, he had beat a gambling game that was designed to be impossible, giving him the money he needed to buy equipment for the Bullet of Bullets.

Yuuki remembered the chilling feeling she experienced when she watched Kirito's first match in GGO. He seemed so unfamiliar with the game, a true sign that it was a brand new experience. But then...he used a photon sword to deflect the bullets of every opponent he faced. It was as much a shock to her as it was to all the other people who had watched at the time.

Sure, she thought she might be able to block a bullet with her sword like he had, especially if she had the assistance of the bullet line system from GGO, but she never would have thought it possible to block more than one or two in a row. The sheer amount of focus and the level of reaction time that would take...

As expected, Kirito blazed through the qualifiers, though after his first match he appeared to be troubled by something. His fighting style had been relaxed at the start, but from the second match onwards he had appeared to be as cold as ice, ending each fight as quickly as possible with no regard for his opponents.

She watched the final showdown between him and his friend Sinon, who she had met briefly a few days earlier, not knowing who she was at the time. Kirito's willingness to just throw the match away had shocked her, given how brutally he had destroyed his previous opponents. Briefly, she wondered whether it had to do with the fact that he was fighting a girl, which would have also explained him not trying against her.

It didn't seem that was the case though. She cursed GGO's observer function for not picking up players' voices so well as she watched him and Sinon exchanging words on the bridge. Then they spread ten meters apart, and Yuuki watched in absolute amazement as Kirito sliced a sniper rifle's bullet out of the air from a distance of ten meters.

Impossible, she had thought. There was no way anyone could be that good. At that range, he only had a small fraction of a second to determine the bullet's path and to intercept it. It was simply inhuman.

The replays from the actual tournament were a little less impressive, if she was honest with herself. Kirito mostly stayed in the shadows and let the other players fend for themselves. He met up with Sinon partway through and they teamed up, though it seemed Sinon wasn't too thrilled about that development. It was strange, because both Kirito and Sinon seemed extremely afraid of a player named Sterben who wielded a silenced sniper rifle.

It would have taken an absolute idiot to not realize that there was something more at stake to those three players—Kirito, Sinon, and Sterben—than the tournament itself. That was proved completely when they faced off as the last three surviving members. Kirito positioned himself as bait for Sterben, while Sinon waited to snipe him when he took a shot at Kirito. It seemed like a foolish plan. Kirito would surely be killed by a silenced sniper, and Sinon might not even see where it came from.

Well, it was Kirito, so her assumption was obviously wrong. He dodged the first bullet from death gun, barely, and charged him outright, deflecting the rifle bullets the entire time. Sinon used the distraction to shoot Sterben, but the two snipers traded fire and ended up destroying both rifles. It seemed like Kirito's victory was guaranteed as he launched a vorpal strike at the defenseless Sterben, but the red-eyed man produced an Estoc and counterattacked easily.

A furious sword fight ensued between the two, but Kirito seemed outmatched by his caped opponent. Yuuki had watched a lot of sword fights in her life, and she had gotten pretty good at reading people. To her, she couldn't help but feel that the two combatants were trying to settle some sort of grudge.

In the end, Kirito prevailed with a little bit of help from Sinon, and the two of them took home the championship together. So, in the span of two days, Kirito had joined a new game and become the undisputed champion at it. The thought was ludicrous. GGO was a game that people played professionally. They spent every moment they could grinding to improve and become the best, and some swordsman just joined out of the blue and beat them all without even using a gun?

With a little more digging, she found a buried post about the GGO finals talking about how Sterben was actually nicknamed 'Death Gun', and that he was using GGO as a means to kill other players in real life. It was rumored that the reason Kirito had transferred to GGO in the first place was to stop him. Did that make Kirito some sort of police officer or something? He was only seventeen years old and he spent most of his time online or in school. If he had been contracted by someone to stop Death Gun, who was it, and why? Why would they pick him instead of one of the other strong GGO players?

"Yuuki?" came the sound of Asuna's voice, breaking her out of her thoughts.

"Huh?" she glanced around, taking in her surroundings. It seemed that she had unconsciously walked to Asuna's house as she had been pondering her Kirito problem and was now standing in the doorway looking clueless.

"You okay?"

Yuuki laughed and forced her smile back onto her face. "Yeah, sorry...I was just trying to think about something."

Asuna motioned for her to come in and sit down. She must have been out wandering for awhile, as only Leafa, Silica, Lizbeth, and Klein were still in the house. The girls were sitting on the couches while Klein seemed to be pondering some mystery of the universe off to the side. The empty dishes lying around indicated that the party was long over, which explained why her guild had apparently left.

"You seem to be troubled by it." Asuna seemed quite concerned for her friend. "Does it have anything to do with what you wanted to ask Kirito?"

There was a sigh from Klein off to the side as he walked over and sat in the chair positioned at the ends of the two couches. "What did that knucklehead do now?"

Yuuki chuckled. "No, no, he didn't do anything...I just asked him to duel me. His response was kinda weird, that's all."

"Didn't the two of you already fight?" Asuna asked.

"Well, yeah, but I'm not an idiot. I know he wasn't taking it seriously at all. I wanted him to fight me and actually try his best. That's why I asked." Everyone seemed surprised by her words, which only served to confuse her further. "What? Why does everyone act like that's such a big deal?"

Leafa glanced down. "Because it is...at least for my brother." She shook her head. "Why did you want him to fight you all out?"

"Pride, probably," she said with a humorless laugh. "The only person I've ever lost to was my sister before she...passed. I've never met another that could best me, so it intrigued me when I learned that people think Kirito is stronger than me. Also...he's kind of an enigma, isn't he? One moment I'm beating him easily, then the next I'm standing there with my jaw on the floor as he cuts apart magic like it's nothing. Not to mention he somehow acquired one of the most desired weapons in the game, Excalibur, and nobody seemed to know."

Yuuki sighed and leaned back. "I tried to research him on the internet, but there wasn't too much information. Mostly just forum posts and some articles written about him from MMO magazines. I did find the footage from GGO, though, not that it really answered any questions."

"You seem really intent on fighting him," Lisbeth commented in what could only be interpreted as a pitying voice. "So...sorry to say it, but I doubt he'll ever agree to do it."

"But why?" she couldn't help but ask. When the others seemed surprised that she was pursuing the topic so hard, she shook her head. "It's not so much the refusing to fight that's bothering me. Rather, it's the fact that he said he'd never be able to do it, and that his skill level seems completely inconsistent from fight to fight. Sometimes he'll be thoroughly mediocre, as if he doesn't care much at all about the fight, and other times he'll be one of the best players I've ever seen."

"Hah," Lisbeth chuckled. "Bet you guys never thought you'd see the day where the Black Swordsman was described as mediocre, huh?"

"Yeah, really," Klein agreed, chuckling.

"...?"

Asuna let out a long sigh. "I suppose we owe you an explanation, Yuuki. You've trusted us with your secret, but little did you know that we have our own."

"Hmm?" What secret could they possibly have that was so bad?

"We're SAO survivors," Asuna admitted quietly.

"Not me," Leafa interjected quickly. "Just them, my brother, and Agil."

"You were a part of SAO?" Yuuki whispered, needing to confirm what she had heard. Suddenly, everything began to make more sense. Why they were so powerful, how they were such close and trusting friends, and why they seemed to gloss over any mention about the past few years.

"Yep," Klein confirmed, the only one still with a lighthearted tone. "We were mostly top players in the game, a part of the clearing group that took out the bosses. Lisbeth was a high level blacksmith, and Silica was an acquaintance of Kirito from a lower floor."

"I think you're underselling two people just a little," Lisbeth commented, causing Asuna to suddenly seem embarrassed.

Klein laughed. "Yeah, I suppose. Asuna was known as the Lightning Flash. She was ridiculously fast back then, and she was probably the second strongest player in the game. Kirito was known by the same name you know him now, the Black Swordsman. He was the best player, or at least tied for the best with the game's creator. It's not really fair to include the creator in the rankings, as he was technically a cheater. Anyway, Kirito was the only player in the game who got the dual wielding skill because he had the fastest reaction time. In the end, he fought the creator, Akihiko Kayaba, in a one on one fight to clear the game." Klein scratched his head. "The details of that fight are a bit personal to some of us, so I'll skip over that. But anyway, the six thousand survivors from SAO pretty much owe Kirito, and by extension, Asuna, their lives."

Yuuki listened intently to Klein's words, suddenly feeling very small. She was the best swordsman who had never fought a battle before. Her fights never had stakes to them, whereas Kirito had become the best with his life on the line. He must view me as a child, she realized.

Asuna shook her head, apparently understanding what her friend was thinking. She moved over to Yuuki and knelt before the imp, taking Yuuki's hands in her own. "He does not think of you as an inferior, none of us do. It's hard to explain, I think, but we fought for years knowing that our lives depended on being perfect. One error, one miscalculation, and a boss or a player would kill you. Many of the people we knew died. Honestly, he hasn't even told me the full story from before we became a party, but I know that Kirito was exposed to more death than most."

The Undine retreated back to the couch, still holding Yuuki's hands. "Part of what made Kirito and myself so strong in SAO is the pressure of the game, knowing that our lives were on the line. When you fight like that for so long, it's really hard to take a game like ALO as seriously as we did SAO." She shook her head. "I'm nowhere near the warrior that I was in SAO anymore. Kirito, on the other hand...honestly I don't know. When he fought in the Bullet of Bullets he was trying for sure, and he wasn't quite his old self, but it was a game he had only played for a day. I think here, now, if one of our lives were in danger and he had to fight for us, we might see that same player that beat SAO once again."

Klein nodded. "Also, some of the mechanics of the game that made Kirito so strong in SAO are different in ALO. Dual wielding hasn't been implemented, as pretty much nobody would be able to use it. It was a unique skill in SAO, only for Kirito, but as far as I know he hasn't developed a true dual wielding skill yet here in ALO." The older man laughed. "Hell, what do I know? Kirito never tells me any of that crap. He might have the skill and its already maxed for all I know."

"What do you mean?" Yuuki asked.

Klein rolled his eyes. "Kirito has a habit of keeping to himself, especially with new things he comes up with. He hid the dual wielding skill for six months before he finally revealed it to anyone, and he only revealed it because a group of lower level players had tried to clear the floor boss on floor 74." With a shake of his head, remembering the fight, he continued. "These guys had no chance. The boss was going to kill them all. It was just me, Kirito, and Asuna to try to save them, but we didn't stand a chance, at least I didn't think so. Usually we fought bosses with fifty or so players so that we could escape without casualties. When he realized that Asuna and I were going to die, he unleashed his dual blades and literally soloed the entire boss."

"He s-soloed a boss?" Yuuki couldn't help but stutter. The thought was ridiculous. She had heard that the New Aincrad bosses were roughly the same difficulty as the ones from SAO, and it had taken one of the most elite parties ever assembled to even kill it with as few as seven players, not to mention dying once to discover its attack patterns. To solo a boss was unthinkable.

Asuna nodded. "Yeah. He won with like fifteen hitpoints left, but he still won." She wiped a tear from her face at the memory. "That's when I finally forced him to party up with me, as he had played solo up until then."

"I think I understand, at least more than before," she said softly, humbled by the knowledge. "I don't understand the whole GGO thing, though."

Again, Asuna winced. "GGO is something we try not to speak about, because it makes us all want to hit Kirito repeatedly when we think of it. Basically, he got word from a guy in the government that debriefed him about SAO that there was a player killing people from within GGO, turning it into a death game like SAO was. Kirito didn't tell any of us about it and went into the game alone to confront the murderer, not willing to put any of our lives at risk again. The guy he fought in the finals, Death Gun, was the person. He was an SAO survivor from a murder guild. He had a grudge against Kirito, as Kirito had killed several members from Death Gun's guild during a massive raid in SAO."

Well, that answers the question of whether or not Kirito ever killed anyone in SAO, Yuuki thought grimly.

"Anyway," Asuna continued. "Kirito beat him in the end, and he's in jail now, along with all of his accomplices. From what Sinon has told me about GGO, there is no way Kirito should have been able to win that fight based on Death Gun's skill and the difference in weapon quality. Yet, when the stakes are the highest, you can always count on him to win."

"In all honestly," Klein interjected. "I'm not sure who would win between the two of you, even if Kirito did fight at 100%. Your speed and skill is definitely at least a match for his own."

Yuuki dipped her head. "Thank you for the compliment, but I think that I would lose, after what you told me." She shook her head sadly. "The difference in experience would be more than I could overcome, not to mention Excalibur..."

"Don't discredit yourself so quickly," Leafa commented. "Even Kirito was impressed by your skill after he fought you the first time, trying or not. When we were trying to figure out how you were so good, I asked him if it was possible that you were an SAO survivor too, but he told me no. He told me that if you had been in SAO with him, you would have been the one to get the dual wielding skill, not him."

Yuuki laughed. "Nah, no way. I suck with my left hand. I couldn't dual wield if my life depended on it." She shook her head. "I don't know who's stronger between me and him, but it doesn't really matter. I feel so bad for trying to get him to fight me seriously. I had no idea what I was asking of him, did I?"

She was surprised when Silica finally spoke up for the first time. "You shouldn't feel bad about it, Yuuki. Kirito is a very compassionate person, and I'm sure he understands why you asked. I just think he didn't want to tell this story himself, as it might be too painful for him."

"Was his life in SAO really that awful?"

Klein groaned. "About six months into the game, I found out that he had joined a small guild. It was weird, because he was a solo player that never seemed to want to join a guild before. Awhile later I heard that his guild members had all died. I never got the full story out of him, but I know he blamed himself for their deaths." He shook his head. "That's how the Black Swordsman was created. He basically stopped caring about his own life. He took crazy risks, especially for a solo player. Most people in SAO leveled in weaker dungeons or in large parties to be absolutely safe. Kirito cleared more high level dungeons on his own than pretty much all of the major guilds in the game combined. He also fought in pretty much every boss fight and was known for appearing on lower floors to solve various problems."

When Klein paused, Silica picked up the story. "I met him sometime after his guild died. I was alone in the forest, as I had abandoned my party. I about to die to a bunch of demonic monkey looking monsters, but he showed up and they just...disappeared. They had killed Pina before he arrived though, so Kirito took me with him on a quest to get an item to revive Pina for me." She giggled. "It was so weird. He was like my big brother for a day, and it was amazing. Well...until we ran into an orange guild—player killers. Turns out the leader of the party I had abandoned was the leader of that orange guild, and she was trying to scout out what items I had. They ambushed us on a bridge, and there must have been like eight of these scary looking guys. I wanted to teleport away, but Kirito just told me to wait in the back while he took care of it."

The younger girl shook her head. "I was so scared when the group of guys jumped him and tried to kill him, especially when Kirito didn't even fight back. But they weren't doing any damage to him. Kirito's level was actually so high that he auto-regenerated more HP than his enemies could remove. He told them that he had been searching for them because they had killed people from another guild, and then he sent them all to prison." She hesitated, but added, "Well...they didn't want to go to prison, so he threatened to kill them if they didn't go willingly."

Lisbeth brought her feet up onto the table in the middle of the room and leaned back. "Yeah, you had so much fun when you met him. When I met him, he snapped my best sword in half and we went on a quest to a frozen mountain. I made a dumb mistake while he was fighting a dragon, and we got trapped inside that dragon's nest for the night." She grimaced. "We were looking for a rare ore to make a better sword for him, and he found out that the ore was actually the dragon's poop."

The pink-haired girl frowned at Asuna. "Your boyfriend threw dragon shit at me, you know!" Everyone laughed at how despondent Lisbeth looked about the whole situation.

Stifling her giggle, Yuuki leaned back in her chair. "Thank you for telling me all of this...everyone. I'm glad to know."

Klein winked at her. "Yeah, no problem. Just don't go telling it to everyone in the game, or Kirito might kill me." He was only joking, of course, but Yuuki definitely had no intention of spreading their secret. She was just grateful that they had trusted her enough to share it in the first place.