The moment Kajiro's words fell silent, whispers spread through the room at once, like ripples across water after a small stone is thrown.
The air, which had barely maintained a fragile balance, began to tilt. Tense. Heavy. Rapid exchanges of glances, brows furrowed with suspicion.
If Kajiro was lying for personal ambition, for the banner, for some private scheme, then this was the most dangerous moment of all.
But if he was telling the truth…
Then the situation was even worse.
Kajiro had not received the Flag of Valor, as everyone had tacitly assumed. Which meant the item was somewhere beyond their control or worse, in the hands of someone who had yet to reveal themselves.
Or another possibility, colder and far more unsettling:
It had never dropped at all.
Either way, Aincrad was no longer the beta test the veteran players once knew.
Too many rules had been altered. Too many "givens" were no longer reliable. Information once considered certain was now nothing more than unverified hypotheses.
And it was precisely that ambiguity that made the room feel suffocating.
No one said it aloud, but everyone understood… if the Flag of Valor truly existed, then the fact that it had not appeared was far more frightening than it falling into the hands of an ambitious individual.
Because that meant… the game was still hiding another move.
Ren exchanged a glance with Kirito, just a fleeting moment, but enough for both of them to understand that silence was no longer an option.
Kirito clenched his hand slightly, his gaze darkening. Then Ren shifted his attention toward Liten and Shivata. No words were needed. Both guild representatives nodded, slowly, decisively.
That unspoken agreement became a signal.
Shivata spoke first. His voice wasn't loud, nor sharp, but it carried the weight of someone accustomed to standing before hundreds of lives.
"We need to clarify something," Shivata said, his gaze sweeping across the crowd. "The Flag of Valor is not an ordinary reward. If it has dropped, then the one holding it isn't just holding an item, they're holding the authority to initiate a campaign."
Liten stepped forward half a pace, her large shield resting lightly against the ground with a dull metallic thud. Her voice was sharper, direct, and unambiguous.
"And if someone is hiding it," she said, "then that's an act that puts the entire Front Line at risk. We're not demanding unconditional surrender. But the one holding the banner, if such a person exists must step forward."
A long silence followed.
No one spoke.
Players looked at one another. Some instinctively opened their item menus, only to close them again in a hurry.
Others took half a step back, as if afraid of drawing attention. The exhilaration of victory had completely dissipated, leaving only mutual wariness behind, something all too familiar, yet never comfortable.
Kirito finally spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but every word was clear.
"If the Flag of Valor is here," he said, "then sooner or later it will have to be used. The issue isn't who deserves it...it's when, and for whom."
Kirito's gaze paused briefly on Kajiro, then passed over Rin before returning to the crowd.
"Remaining silent at a time like this," Kirito continued, his tone low but firm, "only causes people to start doubting one another."
He paused for half a beat, letting the words sink in.
"And a formation built on suspicion… will collapse. No one here wants to see that."
The air seemed to tighten.
"No one wants today's efforts to become a stepping stone toward destruction." Kirito's voice wasn't loud, but it carried the weight of the entire Front Line.
"We've cleared the fifth floor out of a hundred. Every person here, tankers, damage dealers, supports alike, has paid the price in sweat, blood, and near-death moments."
He looked straight at the crowd.
"We're proving something. Proving it to this damned world. Proving it to the one who created it, forcing them to face the results. And proving to those still trembling behind us that… this path can be opened."
Kirito's voice lowered, colder now.
"But if progress is strangled over a single item, if suspicion starts eating away at us, will those behind us still dare to stand up?"
No one answered.
The air in the room felt compressed by another layer of pressure, so heavy that even the sound of breathing became painfully distinct.
Ren remained where he was.
The onyx armor swallowed the lamplight, turning him into a silent mass of darkness in the brightly lit room. He said nothing more. The representatives had spoken on his behalf.
Now, the question had been placed before everyone.
Openly. Bare. Irreversible.
Someone was holding the Flag of Valor.
And if that person did not step forward… then from this very moment on, they had placed themselves opposite the entire Front Line.
It took a while longer for the more than forty members of the raiding party to wrestle with their own thoughts.
Some groups bowed their heads, exchanging hurried whispers.
Some stood still, their eyes dull, as if weighing something that could not be spoken aloud.
Others kept darting their gaze around, overly alert, as though afraid of being noticed simply for looking somewhere a moment too long.
Kirito waited.
He forced himself to remain patient.
But never before had waiting felt this heavy.
Each second no longer felt like a second. They stretched, twisted, and piled on top of one another, like an infinite loop tightening around his chest.
…No one stepped forward.
Kirito's hand tightened, ever so slightly.
So slight that without paying attention, one might think nothing had happened at all.
His teeth ground together. No sound escaped, only a dry grinding echoing inside his head.
He drew in a deep breath. Then turned to Asuna.
Just a brief glance, but enough to confirm that a decision had been made.
Kirito lifted his head.
His voice rang out, low and resolute. "If no one admits to it,"
"then I will request an inspection of everyone's inventory or their loot logs...here."
The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly.
A heavy stillness fell over the space, no longer the silence of hesitation but a silence forcibly compressed, as if someone had just clamped down on the throats of more than forty people at once.
A few heads snapped up; some frowned, others let out half a sentence only to swallow it back down. Glances were exchanged more rapidly now, no longer probing but defensive.
"Inspect… everyone?" a hoarse voice came from somewhere in the crowd. "Personal inventories too?"
Kirito did not answer immediately. He stood straight, shoulders steady, his gaze yielding to no one. "Yes," he said after a brief pause, his tone firm. "No exceptions."
A chain reaction followed at once. Amid the scowls of those who felt insulted and the clenched jaws of others, a few stood out, calm to an almost unreasonable degree.
Ren observed everything. He did not look at faces, which were easily masked by performance and control.
He watched the cracks in their bodies instead. A flawed breath. A subtle shift of the foot in search of balance. The way someone unconsciously narrowed the space around themselves.
For a player, the inventory was the final "fortress." Being ordered to open it was equivalent to having one's ultimate right to privacy stripped away.
Every item rare equipment or nameless junk alike betrayed its owner's habits and ambitions.
It was an insult. Or worse, a death sentence for those hiding something.
In the deadly silence, Ren became something like a living bio-scanner. He saw someone's hand tighten around a sword hilt, a reflexive act of self-defense.
He saw another subtly roll their shoulder, deliberately creating a blind angle from behind. The air began to warp, thick with hostility and unspoken schemes.
A wave of resistance rose into an invisible wall. Almost no one wanted another person to touch their "forbidden zone."
Whispers intertwined, low, dense, like fog. No one voiced an outright refusal, but the atmosphere reeked of wariness. This was the final boundary of a player.
"Then… I'll start first."
Kirito's voice cut through the murmur, not loud, but sharp enough to split the noise in two. He was the first to step across that line.
A soft ting sounded. His personal system window opened with a decisive motion, without a trace of hesitation.
Pale blue light spilled out, illuminating a face already worn with fatigue, yet still holding an almost unsettling calm.
"Everyone, go to your message history," Kirito said as he worked, fingers moving swiftly across the virtual screen. "Select the system notifications."
The item list appeared, transparent and merciless. Everything he had obtained after the grueling battle with the boss lay exposed before them all. There was absolutely no Flag of Valor.
"This history is only temporary storage," Kirito added, his gaze dropping to the lower corner of the interface. "It'll be automatically wiped after one day."
23:51.
The time blinked with an urgent rhythm. The death clock was counting down, and Kirito's honesty had cracked the defensive wall of the crowd.
No further urging or lengthy explanations were needed.
Asuna stepped forward, followed by Yuna, Nautilus, Shivata, and Liten. Then Ren and Agil.
One by one, rings of blue light flared up in the darkened room. Item lists were laid bare under the light like a ritual of absolution.
No one spoke. Only a heavy silence, punctuated by brief nods of confirmation.
The initial fierce resistance began to melt away. Tense shoulders slowly relaxed.
There were resigned sighs. Some hesitated for a few final seconds...but in the end, they too slowly opened their personal lists, accepting the exposure of their secrets to those beside them.
But not everyone was willing to cooperate…