The light from the teleportation array completely faded.
The cold wind, carrying snowflakes, blew against everyone's faces, a biting chill.
Kirito was the first to break the silence, he quickly walked to Asuna's side.
She was still standing in place, her body trembling slightly from anger and incomprehension.
The phrase "What do their deaths have to do with me?" pierced her heart like an ice shard.
"Asuna," Kirito said softly.
Asuna didn't look at him, her gaze still fixed on where the teleportation array had disappeared, as if she wanted to bore a hole through that void.
Sachi also walked over, she understood Asuna's inner torment better than Kirito, and simply gently held Asuna's cold hand.
"Don't think about it, he..."
"A hidden difficulty?" Asuna suddenly snapped her head around, her voice sharp and trembling, "What kind of hidden difficulty could make him say something like that? That's not cold-blooded, that's treating human lives as dirt!"
Kirito let out a long breath of white mist.
"Asuna, calm down," he said in a deep voice, "He, alone, pushed the progress of the entire game forward by at least a year. All of us are enjoying the convenience he brought, yet we turn around and accuse him of being too fast?"
"That's no reason!" Asuna's emotions spiraled out of control, "We are a whole! We should..."
"Have we helped him with anything?" Sachi's voice was very soft, yet it struck Asuna's heart like a heavy hammer, "We, these so-called top players, in front of him, don't even count as obstacles."
Asuna's breathing hitched.
Indeed.
She had seen that battle clearly.
Chen Mo crushed a Level 65 BOSS as easily as an adult toying with a child. And their group of Assault Team elites didn't even have the qualifications to approach the battlefield.
"But..." Asuna still wanted to argue, but found her words so pale and powerless.
"Asuna," Kirito gazed at her, his eyes incredibly complex, "You want to protect everyone, there's nothing wrong with that. But have you ever thought... in this world, Chen Mo's rules might be the only correct rules?"
Survival of the fittest, the strong prey on the weak.
Instead of letting the weak cling to unrealistic fantasies, eroding their will through repeated strokes of luck, it's better to force them to grow through the cruelest reality, or... eliminate them.
Kirito's words were unfinished, but the unsaid cruelty plunged Asuna into an ice cellar.
Her reason told her that Kirito might be right.
But her emotions, her beliefs, her pride as Lightning Flash Asuna, absolutely forbade her from accepting such an answer.
"I... absolutely disagree."
She almost gritted her teeth as she spat out these words, then resolutely opened her menu and activated a Teleportation Crystal.
Light enveloped her, and also took away her last trace of warmth... Knights of the Blood Oath headquarters, Asuna's room.
She threw herself onto the bed, eyes open, the ornate patterns on the ceiling twisting and spinning in her vision.
Chen Mo's power, his ruthlessness, Kirito's words, like countless needles, repeatedly pierced the wall of beliefs she had built up.
Knock, knock.
A knock sounded at the door.
"Come in."
The door opened, and her close friend Mito walked in. She was carrying a steaming cup of black tea, a reassuring smile on her face as always.
"So late, Mito?"
"I saw you come back alone earlier, I was a little worried." Mito handed her the teacup and sat down by the bed.
The warmth in her palm eased Asuna's taut nerves slightly.
She remained silent, telling Mito everything that had happened that night, exactly as it occurred.
Mito listened quietly, without interrupting, her gaze focused.
It wasn't until Asuna finished speaking that she suddenly asked a question.
"So, what you're angry about is that he wouldn't stop for you?"
"No!" Asuna immediately retorted, "I'm angry about his attitude! It's that phrase, 'What do their deaths have to do with me!'"
"But, Asuna," Mito gazed at her, her smile gone, replaced by a calm Asuna had never seen before, a rationality almost bordering on indifference, "He wasn't wrong."
Asuna was stunned.
"Mito... you?"
"Think about it carefully," Mito's voice was clear and calm, "Does he have an obligation to save everyone? No. Did he promise to lead us? No, he didn't. He's just clearing this death game in his own way, at the fastest possible speed."
"We are just happening to walk on the path he forged."
"Why should the person walking in front be asked to stop because of those who can't keep up?"
These words, like a scalpel, precisely dissected the reality Asuna had deliberately avoided.
She felt a sense of unfamiliarity.
Her dearest friend in front of her seemed to have become another person.
"Mito, you've changed."
"I haven't changed, Asuna." Mito shook her head, a complex, unreadable emotion in her eyes, "I just... saw reality clearly. You're too kind, always wanting to pull everyone along, but this is SAO, and kindness won't keep you alive."
"But kindness can keep us from being monsters!" Asuna stood up excitedly.
"Then is Chen Mo a monster?" Mito countered.
Asuna opened her mouth, but not a single word came out.
Yes, he was cold, he was overbearing, but he only killed those who deserved to be killed, and everything he did objectively shortened everyone's suffering.
He just... disdained to feign his pity.
"You see," Mito's voice became ethereal, "He hasn't lost his way, he knows his goal clearer than any of us. The path he chose is the most efficient, the most correct path."
"That's too cold-blooded!"
"Cold-blooded?" Mito suddenly laughed. She stood up, walked to the window, and turned her back to Asuna.
"Asuna, do you know? I even think that it's precisely because people like Chen Mo exist that we, the rest of us, have a glimmer of hope to survive."
Her voice carried a kind of almost fanatical adoration.
"He's not some god of strategy, he is the rule of this world itself. What we can do is not to question the rule, but to try our best to adapt to it, to keep up with him."
Asuna looked at Mito's slender back, and an unprecedented sense of loneliness engulfed her.
Even her best friend had sided with him.
"Mito, you..."
"I envy Argo."
Mito suddenly spoke, her voice as soft as a sigh, yet it clearly reached Asuna's ears.
"I envy her for being able to stand by such a person."
"Watching him, following him, witnessing him..."
A long silence fell in the room.
After a long while, Mito finally turned around, her gentle smile restored to her face, as if everything that had just happened was merely an illusion.
"It's late, you should get some rest."
She walked to the door, her hand on the doorknob, and looked back at the distraught Asuna once more.
"Asuna, admitting that others are stronger than you and following in the footsteps of the strong is never something to be ashamed of."
The door closed softly.
Asuna was left alone in the room.
Mito's words echoed repeatedly in her mind, and a strong sense of unease seized her.
It wasn't just a difference in philosophy.
It was also the dangerous, almost blind adoration for Chen Mo in Mito's words.
Asuna suddenly rushed to the window and pushed it open.
The night wind poured in, icy and biting.
And on the other side of the guild building, behind a window, Mito was quietly gazing at the same night sky.
In the depths of her pupils, the starlight outside the window was reflected, but it was brighter than the starlight, colder than the night.
There, a flame named ambition was burning.