Abyss of the Shrine Maiden

Incredibly Sad And Lonely

“The masked NPC is nowhere to be found.”

“Everyone’s heard the rumors, so if anyone had seen her, we’d hear about it right away.”

“But like Argo said, she’s like a ghost. Even if we do hear something, if we don’t drop everything and go right away--poof!”

Leafa agrees with Koharu and looks to her brother. “Then it’s better that we just go around looking for her ourselves.”

Klein sighs. “I wonder if that NPC is still trying to obtain that goal of hers.”

“I think so. That’s the feeling I got when I talked to her, anyway.”

“An NPC acting of her own accord to fulfill her own goals… Once again, that sounds so foreign. Nothing like that happened in SAO, not even with the more human-like NPCs we encountered. They remained limited to bounds of player interaction in their quests.”

“And Zeliska told me about GGO’s Arfa-Sys. Compared to our masked friend, Daisy, Rei, and Lievre are advanced for the type of NPCs they are, but they are bound to their respective players, similar to Genesis and Tia, but with a stricter kind of binding. While they can act as their being, they are still bound to their Masters. In other words, they act within the confines of their Masters’ will.”

“Can we talk about that NPC and what connection she might have with Premiere,” Leafa asks. “That is the biggest mystery of the whole thing. The first thought that comes to mind is that it's Tia. But it can’t be. They look nothing alike. Though her being such a skilled fighter and acting of her own free will does kind of point to Tia.”

“What’d she say when Premiere collapsed again? ‘You’re suffering, too?’”

“That must mean she knows something. And that whatever is happening to Premiere is happening to her, too.”

“Yeah, it could be.”

“We should look and see if there are any other NPCs that have had the same thing happen to them,” Kirito suggests.

“To double-check that Premiere and that NPC are the only two who are affected, right?”

“Yeah, but affected by what, I wonder… I hope our resident AI expert can figure something out.”

“...Remember what we said about Premiere before,” Asuna says after being quiet the entire time. “That there’s no replacement for her. That’s why it hurts so much to think about something terrible happening.”

“And because she’s been with us since she was basically ‘born.’”

“Yeah.”

Koharu drops her head as memories flood her head of the various NPCs they met in SAO. “We’ve met many NPCs back in the original Aincrad. Many of them were the normal, forgettable kind, but some still have an impact on me. And speaking of sick ones, I remember asking Jaymes about the girl on the first-floor quest. You remember the one Kirito?”

“Ah, yes. The girl got sick, so we had to gather herbs to help her.”

“Mhm. I asked Jaymes if it was possible she’d ever feel better, and he told me that, from our perspective, she is okay, but for players who never completed the quest, no. In other words, she’s indefinitely ill for players to make her indefinitely better. And beyond that, there’s that version of Kizmel who we got to know for six floors, how did she fare for the remaining sixty-six floors. Bellatrix, the inventor, I wonder how many inventions she came up with before the game ended. Erassa, who Jaymes, Eiji, Yuuna, and I met on the fortieth floor, I wonder how she’s living her days. We can’t go back to find out, and for some reason, that pains me. After meeting so many NPCs, it didn’t matter that they weren’t like us. They were my friends. And that’s why I have to give it my all to help Premiere, no matter what. I’ve only known her a short time, but she’s my friend and your friend.”