Kibaou

Kibaou (キバオウ) is one of the 10,000 players who were trapped in «Sword Art Online» and the former leader of one of the two top clearing guilds in the early days of Sword Art Online, the «Aincrad Liberation Squad». In the aftermath of the 25th Floor battle, his guild merged with «MMO Today», and Kibaou became a sub-leader of the new guild that was named «Aincrad Liberation Force».

Appearance
According to Kirito, Kibaou is a short yet solidly built man with sienna, spiky (cactus-styled) hair. He also has a small sienna goatee and brown eyes and wears a scale mail armor with a rather large one-handed sword on his back.

Personality
Kibaou is a power-hungry person who abuses authority to accumulate more wealth and power by extorting taxes and items through intimidation.

Aria of a Starless Night
During the First Floor Boss Strategy Meeting on December 2, Kibaou addressed the crowd, blaming the beta testers for the deaths of the beginner players, and demanded that all the beta testers apologize for the deaths that they had allegedly caused, and relinquish all the items they had acquired to other players. However, Kibaou was silenced by Agil, who defended the beta testers by revealing that the free guidebook, which could be obtained for free at any store, was written using the knowledge provided by beta testers.

Kibaou was one of the players who were part of the boss raid of the 1st Floor and also the leader of group E, in charge of handling the sentinels, during the battle.

Concerto of Black and White
On December 15, 2022, Kibaou, along with Morte and three other members of the Aincrad Liberation Squad, entered the Queen Spider Cave as part of the guild creation quest. As they proceeded through the dungeon, Kibaou loudly expressed his shock at seeing all the chests looted before their arrival, unaware of the presence of Kirito, Asuna, and Kizmel, whom his party walked past. However, upon encountering Nephila Regina, the boss of the dungeon, on the second level of the cave, Kibaou and his group panicked and raced back to the entrance, where they were forced to engage in combat with several regular spiders, before returning to the dungeon.

During the strategy meeting later that evening in Zumfut, Kibaou and Lind announced the official and formally recognized establishment of the Aincrad Liberation Squad (ALS) and the Dragon Knights Brigade (DKB) guilds, their respective member lists, and their requirements for accepting new members into the guild, with Kibaou stipulating only that all potential recruits be at least level nine. He remained silent as Lind declared their previously discussed agreement to restrict Kirito and Asuna from joining the same guild in the interest of balance, though he took offense at Lind's implication that their combined strengths were only equal for the moment, and acknowledged Kirito's announcement that he had no intention of joining or creating a guild for the foreseeable future. After being given the floor, Kibaou proclaimed their goal of clearing the 3rd Floor within a week, scheduling their arrival at the Labyrinth in four days and the defeat of the Floor Boss in two. To best ensure that objective, he declared they had to enlist more people who had a grudge against the game, as they could not keep their current pace with only about forty players. He also challenged the clearers to set on reaching the next town by the next day and read Argo's strategy guide for the most important pieces of information. After announcing that whichever guild found the boss chamber first would assume leadership of the boss raid and seeing there were no further questions, he closed the meeting with a cheer, reaffirming their intention of beating the Floor Boss within a week.

The Day Before
Kibaou was mentioned to have been regarded as the leader of the clearing group. Fed with the false information regarding the 25th Floor boss, the clearing group suffered massive casualties.

Kibaou retired from the front lines after the debacle. «Knights of the Blood» took charge of the clearing group afterwards.

Morning Dew Girl
Kibaou's faction was well known to be very corrupt as they abused their authority even on children by extorting taxes and items. With the growing displeasure of him being on the sidelines too much, he ordered the army squad led by Kobatz to take on the 74th Floor's boss, The Gleam Eyes, to prove that he was still contributing to clearing the game. After their slaughter, he was placed under a lot of heat. It was at this point that he staged a coup, stranding the guild's leader, Thinker, in a very high level dungeon and used his influence to stop the rest of «The Army» from interfering. At the end, after Thinker was rescued by Kirito and Asuna from the dungeon, he was finally overthrown.

Kibaou was logged out after Kirito killed Heathcliff, prematurely clearing the game.

Gallery

 * See: Kibaou/Image Gallery

Trivia

 * Kibaou speaks in a Kansai dialect.
 * Kibaou's name may literally mean "Fang King".
 * In the original story, the topic of Diavel's death after the defeat of Illfang the Kobold Lord was brought up by Diavel's party member, named Lind, while Kirito's status as a beta tester was brought up by a member of Kibaou's party. Kibaou himself remained silent during the scene. In the anime adaptation, Kibaou was the one who brought up the topic of Diavel's death, as Lind's role was cut out from the episode.

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