I like traveling the most

The evidence rope that strangled the dead armor was collected. Although it was useless, it might be related to some clues. The blood-red spear stuck in his chest was also collected.

At first, Xiaolin thought that the spear was Smail's weapon, but after getting it in his hand, he found that it was just an ordinary spear. Then he threw it to Kirito and asked him to keep the evidence together with the rope.

After leaving the church, Xiaolin nodded to the two players guarding the door to show their hard work, and then shouted to the players who had not yet dispersed: "Everyone, who was the first to discover this just now? Can you raise your hand to indicate it!"

As one of the famous people in Aincrad, his words were still very effective.

Soon, a woman in the crowd raised her hand timidly and walked out after the crowd dispersed.

She had slightly curly hair. Judging from the appearance of the character, she should be only seventeen or eighteen years old. She looked ordinary and there was still a terrified expression on her face.

Xiaolin did not know this person.

This means that she is not a strategy group or a top player, and her equipment looks ordinary. She should be a mid-level player who came here for sightseeing.

"What is your name?"

"Ye, Yezi."

This voice is familiar. It should be the one who screamed just now.

Perhaps because she felt that the girl in front of her was pitiful, Asuna took the initiative to ask: "Excuse me, I have to ask you after seeing such a horrible thing just now. Can you please explain what happened just now?"

"I, I... I am a friend of the person who was killed just now. We agreed to come here for dinner today, but we got separated in this square... Then... Then..."

She seemed unable to continue, and just covered her mouth with her hand.

Asuna gently stroked Yezi's back.

It seemed that this way was to relieve her fear.

After a long time, she finally stopped crying, said sorry in an almost inaudible voice, and then began to explain again.

"That person... his name is Kainz. We used to be members of the same guild. Now we occasionally team up or eat together. Today we are going to have dinner here..."

Yezi closed her eyes tightly, and then continued in a trembling voice: "But there are too many people here, so we got separated in the square. When I looked around, I suddenly saw Kainz fell from the window of this church and was hanging in the air... There was a blood-red spear stuck in his chest."

"Did you see anyone else at that time?"

Hearing Asuna's question, Yezi fell silent for a moment, and then she nodded slowly but surely.

"Yes... Although it was only a moment, I seemed to see... someone standing behind Kainz."

Hearing this, Kirito and Asuna's expressions changed slightly.

Is the criminal really in that room?

Asuna asked again: "Is that figure someone you know?"

"..."

Yezi closed her lips and thought for a while, and shook her head as if she couldn't think of anything after a few seconds.

"Has Kainz ever offended anyone, or had any conflicts with others..."

"..."

Yezi shook her head again.

But this is not necessarily true. After all, the two are good friends. Maybe she just thought there was no conflict.

"Is that so..."

Kirito and Asuna sighed helplessly.

Without any clues, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack to find the murderer. For a while, both of them were a little helpless.

Then, because Yezi did not dare to go back to the lower floor alone, Xiaolin and others sent her to the nearest hotel.

Then——

"I said, Xiaolin, I'm hungry! I was dragged away just now, and I didn't eat anything at all! Hurry up and eat! Hurry up!" The stupid goddess started to throw a tantrum.

Obviously, there is no hunger in the game, there are only numerical values, but she can say that she is hungry with confidence.

And now that a murder has happened, she is still thinking about eating. I have to praise her for being thick-skinned.

Kirito was speechless.

Asuna persuaded her kindly, "Well... Miss Aqua, can you please be patient for a while? We still have to find the murderer..."

"No, no, no! I want to eat! I haven't even finished the wine I just ordered! Why do I have to encounter this kind of thing? Please don't push this kind of trouble onto me!"

Aqua began to make trouble unreasonably.

Asuna and Kirito were powerless to deal with such a person. They said on the spot that they would be responsible for the next investigation, and Kobayashi took Aqua to eat.

Return to the 59th floor.

There are still many players left here. After all, a murder just happened here, and it is impossible not to be nervous. But now they don't know who the murderer is, so they can only let others disperse first, and warn them not to leave the hotel during this period of time-the hotel can lock the door, and no one can enter except those who are allowed.

Arriving at the restaurant again, Aqua ordered a lot of food and ate and drank happily on the side.

Kobayashi used the communication to contact Kirito with Asuna.

[Sure enough, the first step should be to start the investigation from the murder weapon. 】

【In that case, let's go find Kazuma. His blacksmithing skills are not low, so he should know something. There are also players with special blacksmithing skills in the guild, so they should be able to find out more information. 】

【Understood, let's go now. 】

Close the communication with Kirito, and send a message to Sato Kazuma that Kirito and Asuna will take the weapon to him for identification. After waiting for about fifteen minutes, I received several messages from Sato Kazuma.

First of all, the rope that helped Kainz was an ordinary item sold in the store, and its durability was only about half.

The blood-red spear stuck in the chest was made by a player named [Grimrock]. The effect was not special, and this spear was not a top-level weapon. It was just the name of the weapon-the Thorn Spear and the appearance of the spear were a bit scary.

After that, Kobayashi asked Sato Kazuma to find the player who made the spear, but soon learned that there was no such person in the Business Alliance.

Kirito and Asuna suspected that he was dead.

However, when they arrived at the Black Iron Palace, they did not find the name of Grimrock. He was probably still alive in Aincrad, and Kainz's name was indeed crossed out.

As it was getting dark, today's investigation ended here.

Kobayashi also said that after returning, he would ask Sato Kazuma to find out where Grimrock was as soon as possible, and agreed to meet at the restaurant on the 59th floor tomorrow evening.

Sato Kazuma controlled 30% of Aincrad's business, and with his huge network of contacts, he quickly found out where Grimrock was, but Kobayashi did not leave Kirito and Asuna to find him first, but waited until the evening of the next day.

Originally agreed to meet at 5 pm, the two did not arrive until 6:30.

"Damn! That guy...!"

As soon as she sat down, Asuna's expression was quite angry.

After detailed inquiries, it was learned that the two met a player from the Holy Dragon Union when they came to the restaurant, and he took away the bloody spear that killed Kainz.

This behavior clearly violated etiquette.

In SAO, as long as a weapon that is not set on an equipment doll falls to the ground, the weapon is handed over to someone else, or the weapon is stabbed into a monster and taken away directly, the owner's attributes will disappear after 300 seconds.

And this item belongs to the next person who picks it up, whether in the system or in general.

After the blood-red spear took Kainz's life, the owner's property has disappeared, so now it belongs to Kirito in the system.

Although there are cases where people are forced to hand over weapons for free, the gun is not only a weapon but also an important piece of evidence.

"So you handed it over easily?"

Kobayashi looked at Asuna strangely: "What about you, didn't you stop him?"

"I stopped him, but this guy actually said something - I'm not a security guard or a military police, it's not reasonable to take it for myself, since he wants it, just give it to him... and handed it over so easily."

Asuna was angry.

Kobayashi suspected that she was angry not because she was robbed, but because Kirito was not tough.

Kirito also said: "That man - Schmidt seems to know Keynes. When I asked him, he acted very rudely, so I thought he also wanted to help, so I gave him the spear."

"... You are really kind."

"That's right! Especially that Schmidt, who threatened not to investigate further at the end! Ahhh, I'm so angry!"

Asuna became more and more manic.

Even at the end, she even said: "Could it be that the guy is the criminal? He was afraid that someone would find the clue, so he hurriedly took back the murder weapon."

"No, if that's the case, why didn't he take it away from the beginning? I think the gun is a message left by the criminal." Kirito said.

"I think so too. Rather than saying it's a malicious PK, it's more like a public execution."

Hang the man outside the window and let him die slowly.

"But what is certain is that Schmidt is also an insider."

"The motive for the murder was revenge... no, it should be punishment. Because Kainz committed some kind of crime in the past, he was killed as a punishment - the criminal should want to express this meaning."

"In this case, Schmidt should not be the criminal, but the target of the criminal. He did something with Kainz before, so he took action anxiously after his partner was killed..."

The three of them raised their heads at the same time.

It seems that it is time to talk to Yezi again.

Aqua seemed to have sensed something, and she also raised her head, but with her mouth full of food, she looked like a Husky hiding in a wolf pack. They look similar, but their inner selves are very different.

The four of them soon met Yezi again.

No greetings, just get to the point.

"First, the information we found... We went to the Black Iron Palace last night to confirm that Mr. Keynes had indeed passed away. And we want to ask if you have heard of these names - one is the blacksmith Grimrock, and the other is the spear user Schmidt."

Ye Zi's head, which had been lowered, shook.

Obviously, she knew these two people.

"Yes, I know both of them. Keynes and I, as well as them, were all members of the same guild in the past."

According to Ye Zi, the guild they originally belonged to was called Golden Apple. It was a small guild that conducted safe hunting not for the purpose of conquering floors but to earn money for hotels and food.

But half a year ago, they were very lucky to encounter a special monster, which was the same as the treasure rat on the first floor, and could drop special items.

And they were also very lucky to defeat that monster, and the treasure that dropped out also shocked them.

It was a ring that could increase agility by 20 points.

Even the front line has never dropped any jewelry with such a high value.

You can imagine what happened next.

The expensive props obtained unintentionally caused the guild to be divided into two groups. One group was used by the guild members, and the other group was to sell it. The two groups almost fought and split the guild. In the end, they chose to vote, and the result of the vote was to sell it. Sold.

But because the props were so rare that middle-level merchants couldn't handle them, the guild leader had no choice but to take the rings to the frontline auction house and consign them for sale.

As a result, the president did not come back.

On the second day of the agreed time, the president still did not come back. Feeling bad, the group ran to the Black Iron Palace to confirm the situation——

"The time of death was the night when the president took the ring to the upper level. It was after one o'clock in the night. The cause of death was... penetrating attribute damage."

Hearing this, the three of them raised their eyebrows.

The bloody spear that killed Kainz was a penetrating attribute damage.

"If you get such a rare item, you shouldn't run out of the circle. If you still get killed, it means it's sleep PK. But half a year ago, there weren't that many players who knew this method."

Half a year ago, someone discovered that when players go to sleep, they can use the application to perform PK to reset their health points to zero. At that time, it caused quite a commotion.

Since then, no one has slept in the common areas to save money on accommodation.

"As expected, the only ones who killed the president were the players who knew about this ring, which means..."

One of the seven members of the guild.

Asuna didn't finish her words, but Yezi nodded heavily: "Of course we thought so too, but we couldn't trace where everyone was at that time, so they began to be suspicious of each other, and soon the guild collapsed."

Anguished silence once again enveloped the room.

It's a rather uncomfortable story, but it happens all the time in Aincrad.

It is not uncommon for a Harmony Guild, which has no signs of discord, to collapse because of rare luck.

The reason why we don’t often hear this kind of gossip is because for those involved, it is probably a memory that they really want to forget.

Although I didn't look in the mirror, I was sure that my expression was gloomy.

Kirito asked with difficulty: "I want you to tell me something. Can you tell me the names of the people who were against selling the ring at the beginning?"

"..."

Yezi was silent for a few more seconds.

Then he raised his head as if he had made up his mind and answered clearly: "Kainz, Schmitt and I..."

This answer is a little surprising.

After all, Yezi didn't look like a martial artist, but then she revealed her relationship with Kainz - a couple.