Kirigaya Kazuto


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Kirigaya Kazuto (桐ヶ谷 和人), born as Narusaka Kazuto (鳴坂 和人), and known as Kirito (キリト) in «Sword Art Online» (SAO), «ALfheim Online» (ALO), «Gun Gale Online» (GGO), «Project Alicization», and Unital Ring, is the protagonist of the main Sword Art Online series. Meet Kirito= Meet Star King= Kirito was chosen to be one of the one thousand beta testers for the closed beta of Sword Art Online, the first ever Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG) for the NerveGear, and later joined the official version of the game. He thus became one of the 10,000 players who were trapped in Sword Art Online, where he remained a solo player for the majority of the game, willingly taking on the role of a Beater to reduce discrimination against other former beta testers, as well as actively taking part in Boss battles as one of the Clearers. Kirito temporarily became a member of the Moonlit Black Cats after helping them safely escape a dangerous dungeon, but returned to being a solo player when a fatal error resulted in the death of the other guild members. At some point in the game, Kirito became known as the «Black Swordsman» (黒の剣士) due to his tendency to wear black clothing. Near the end of the game, Kirito joined the Knights of the Blood due to losing a wager with its leader, Heathcliff. Kirito eventually put an end to the game by defeating the final boss, thus clearing the game.

As Asuna and a small group of Sword Art Online survivors were not logged out from Sword Art Online in the aftermath of the incident, Kazuto began playing ALfheim Online as a Spriggan due to seeing an in-game screenshot of what resembled Asuna, and thus wanting to investigate the matter. After freeing the three hundred remaining captives, Kazuto continued playing ALfheim Online, under new management, with his old friends from Sword Art Online, as well as new friends from ALfheim Online.

Due to the request of Kikuoka Seijirou, Kazuto temporarily converted his ALfheim Online avatar to Gun Gale Online via The Seed to investigate a series of strange deaths, rumoured to be associated with a mysterious player, referring to himself as Death Gun. Thus, Kirito took part in the largest tournament in the game, the Bullet of Bullets, to attract the attention of the mysterious player.

In the aftermath of the incident, Kazuto returned with his avatar to ALfheim Online and continued playing it with his friends. Several months later, Kazuto was offered a part-time job to test a new FullDive machine known as the Soul Translator, but unbeknownst to him, he was actually helping with a military project known as Project Alicization.

Real World / Sword Art Online / Project Alicization
Kirito described the appearance of his avatar at the beginning of the game and the beta-testing phase as having the appearance of a ridiculously handsome protagonist from some fantasy animation, looking noticeably older than he actually was. His in-game height was equal to that of his height in the real world to prevent the extra height from hindering his movements.

In the full version of the game, during Kayaba Akihiko's tutorial, all player avatars were changed to reflect their real life appearances. After this change, Kirito's SAO avatar had slightly long but neat black hair and black eyes. His delicate face showed no trace of masculinity, allowing people to easily mistake him for a girl.

At the beginning of Project Alicization, Kirito wore a hand-sewn pale blue short-sleeved shirt with a V-shaped cut on the chest which was tied with a light brown cord along with trousers and hand-sewn leather shoes. Two years later, after he became a valet in the Sword Mastery Academy, he wore the standard gray uniform, like all first years and non-elite swordsmen do. In the second year of the academy, after he became one of the twelve elite swordsmen in the academy and was allowed to choose a color for his uniform, he wore a pitch black uniform.

ALfheim Online
Kirito's initial appearance was that of a default «Spriggan», which he chose because of the race's black-themed equipment. Instead of the normal black forelocks hanging from his head, his black hair stood in natural spikes. His large eyes appeared mischievous, his ears were pointy, and he had dark greyish blue wings. He was equipped with a large greatsword, intended for larger players, such as «Imps».



On June 23, 2025, Kirito changed his previous spiky hairstyle into his old SAO style due to Yui complaining about it being hard to sit on the spiky hair. Later, he also acquired a new coat and switched his greatsword to a new long sword, with an extra one in his inventory.

On December 28, 2025, he obtained the «Holy Sword Excalibur», and used it as his second weapon when dual wielding, but only in extreme cases, as he promised himself not to use the sword for personal gain.

Gun Gale Online


Kazuto's avatar in Gun Gale Online belongs to the rare «M9000» series. It is an avatar that many male players dream of having, due to its feminine appearance. Kazuto's avatar in Gun Gale Online is both shorter and more slender than his spriggan avatar in ALfheim Online. Although the two avatars share the same black hair and eyes, his hair now flows down to his shoulder blades, while his eyes are larger and shinier. The innocently bewitching gaze from his eyes, framed by long eyelashes, was so different from his previous avatar that Kirito himself momentarily forgot that he was looking at himself when he inspected his appearance for the first time. The avatar also has pale white complexion and red lips. These characteristics often allow others to confuse him as being female. This often causes great confusion to people, such as Sinon. He is equipped with a 5.7mm «FN Five-Seven» handgun and «Kagemitsu G4» photon sword.

Personality
Kazuto is someone who is not good with words, as stated by Klein, and can be quite direct. This is due to him not having many friends and closing others off because of his love for computers. Thus, he can appear to be rude to others, such as Lisbeth and Sinon. Sometimes, he actually seems to enjoy angering and teasing people as well. Also, from time to time, Kazuto can be quite overconfident thinking he can do things others cannot.

Kazuto is almost always a calm and collected character, rarely showing any signs of distress. When Kayaba Akihiko announced that Sword Art Online had become a Death Game, Kirito was able to quickly accept the new conditions of the game and take immediate action to increase his chances of survival.

However, Kazuto is actually a kind person, willing to sacrifice himself to help others. When the death of Diavel during the 1st Floor Boss battle resulted in players accusing Kirito of withholding information as a beta tester that led to their leader's death, he decided to become a scapegoat by naming himself a Beater to distance himself from the average beta tester, ensuring that they would not become victims of unfounded hate by drawing all the ire of the players onto himself. He also tends to comfort others when they experience hardship, such as Silica after she lost Pina.

Kazuto is also a very emotional person and lets his emotions control him from time to time. The deaths of Sachi and the Moonlit Black Cats had haunted him until his marriage with Asuna in Sword Art Online. Sachi's death, in particular, had a huge effect on his personality and motives, making him very distant from others for a while. Kirito also temporarily lost his will to live when Asuna was killed by Heathcliff.

Kazuto is a person with incredibly strong resolve, willing to do anything and everything in his power to accomplish something that is important to him without any hesitation. When Asuna was being held in ALfheim, Kirito was bound and determined to set her free and immediately attempted to fly up World Tree when Yui confirmed that she detected Asuna being at its top, despite this being an impossible task. He also attempted to fight his way to the top by himself twice despite being annihilated the first time.

After escaping Sword Art Online, Kazuto attempted to atone for his past mistakes, such as mending his relationship with his cousin Suguha, whom he had ignored before becoming trapped in the death game.

Background


Born on October 7, 2008, Narusaka Kazuto was adopted by his aunt and uncle a year after his birth, when his biological parents died in an accident. Raised by his foster parents as a son, Kazuto was originally forced to train with his cousin in the neighborhood kendo dojo; however due to his aunt's influence as an editor for a computer systems magazine, Kazuto became more interested in computers and dropped kendo after two years. This decision earned him a heavy beating from his grandfather, prompting Suguha to defend him by promising to practice enough for both of them. At the age of ten, Kazuto discovered that he was adopted from erased Juki Net records and since then unintentionally began distancing himself from Suguha.

Sword Art Online Closed Beta
One of the lucky 1000 players accepted into the closed-beta, Kirito logged hundreds of hours of playtime. He, along with the other top players, were able to reach the 10th Floor before the beta had ended.

Aincrad Arc


Shortly after logging in to the fully released SAO, Kirito was stopped by a stranger. Klein, a new guy, asks for his help in learning how to play. After befriending each other and training in the fields for several hours, they were forcefully teleported back to the Town of Beginnings, to receive an announcement from Kayaba Akihiko. He revealed that the lack of a logout function, which they had recently realized, was a "feature" of his new game, and that forced removal of the NerveGear headpiece from the other side would fry the person's brain using microwaves.



The only means to escape was to clear the game, in other words, to successfully defeat all 100 floors of Aincrad and defeat the final boss. Kirito immediately took Klein and ran off, and after hearing that Klein would remain with his friends here, left him and headed off to the next town.

The First Day
Kirito spent the first day making his way to the next village. He decided to complete a quest, which he knew of from the beta period, to obtain a new sword. During this quest he encountered another player, a beta tester named Coper, who proposed forming a party and completing the quest together. After killing many «Little Nepenthes», two more Nepenthes, one with the required item and another with a fruit, appeared. Kirito killed the one carrying the flower while Coper intentionally kills the one with the fruit while triggering the fruit, which caused many Little «Nepenthes» to swarm on their position. Kirito managed to escape, but Coper, who did not know that his «Hiding» skill would not work against monsters that did not rely on sight, died. This caused Kirito's mortality to weigh heavily on him.

Aria of a Starless Night
At around 04:00 on December 2, 2022, nearly a month since the start of the official service of the game, Kirito encountered a hooded player fighting a Ruin Kobold Trooper on the nineteenth level of the 1st Floor's Labyrinth. While amazed by the player's brilliant skill with a rapier, the former beta tester hesitated before revealing himself to the fencer after the fight to comment on the inefficiency of using Sword Skills on a nearly dead enemy.

During his conversation with the hooded player, Kirito realised that he was speaking to a girl based on her voice, and was astonished by her disregard for her self-preservation, the time she had spent in the Labyrinth, and the condition of her equipment. When the player collapsed just before she could leave, the swordsman carried her to the forest outside of the Labyrinth and waited for her to recover. Seven hours later, the girl awoke, desiring to return to the Labyrinth again, thus Kirito suggested going to the First Floor Boss Strategy conference at Tolbana instead, if she truly wished to beat the game, instead of just dying pointlessly.

Having arrived at Tolbana, Kirito informed the hooded player that the meeting would take place at the town square at 16:00, before they momentarily parted ways. Immediately afterward, Kirito encountered the Argo the information broker, who notified him that the person interested in his «Anneal Blade+6» had raised his offer to 29,800 Cor; however, Kirito again refused to sell his sword, wondering why Argo's client was so persistent.

Kirito later found and joined the player from the Labyrinth, they both began to eat their bread. Kirito gave her a pot of cream and later explained how he had obtained the item and offered to give tips on how to gain the item efficiently, but the player quickly rejected his offer, stating that she did not come to the town to eat good food. Kirito questioned why she was in the town and listened to her explanation. After the clarification, Kirito began to apologize but was interrupted by the clock bell. The player realized that the meeting was about to start so they both headed to the conference.

The meeting was organized by a player named Diavel. Forty-four people went to the meeting and decide to try to defeat the 1st Floor boss, discovered in Argo's strategy guide to be Illfang the Kobold Lord. As the members gathered themselves into parties at Diavel's suggestion, Kirito and the mysterious fencer found themselves without a group. Kirito offered to form a party with the female player and was accepted, upon which he learned her name was Asuna. They were assigned to support E group, charged with clearing the monsters that accompanied the boss.

After the meeting, upon learning of Asuna's complete ignorance of MMO game mechanics, Kirito offered to explain MMO terms and strategies to her in detail so as to improve her chances of survival, but she requested the lesson to take place where they would not be seen. As Kirito considered several possible locations, Asuna revealed she had been sleeping in cheap inns that made sleeping less than ideal. Kirito disclosed that there were other rooms outside of inns that could be rented and described at length the details of his own rented room, but was suddenly seized by Asuna when he divulged that it had a bath. Confused at her response, he finally realized her intention when she requested the location of other such rooms with baths, but he had to reveal that there were no others, as he had rented the entire space and he could not cancel his transaction. At that moment, he was asked to lend his bathroom.

At the farmhouse where Kirito had rented his space, he showed the bathroom to Asuna and warned her that the NerveGear could not adequately recreate a liquid environment. As he waited for Asuna, he focused all his willpower to not look at the bathroom door and tried to read Argo's strategy guide. At that moment, he was visited by Argo, from whom he learnt that her client had raised his offer for Kirito's Anneal Blade to 39,800 Cor. Shocked at how the buyer was willing to spend so much money on his sword when it would easier and cheaper to acquire a similar sword, Kirito requested the name of Argo's client, and was surprised to learn it was Kibaou. Pondering on the reason behind Kibaou's actions, Kirito was late to realize that Argo intended to use the bathroom to change her equipment. A few seconds after the info broker entered the bath and Asuna exited, Kirito lost consciousness.

The next day on December 4, when the boss raid party gathered in Tolbana for the upcoming boss battle, Kirito was approached by Kibaou, who gruffly ordered him and Asuna to only engage stray Ruin Kobold Sentinels during the battle. As Kibaou was walking away, Kirito suddenly noticed that Kibaou had not spent the money offered for the former's Anneal Blade to upgrade his equipment instead, causing Kirito to become suspicious, but his thoughts were interrupted when, at that moment, Diavel began his speech to the raid party.

Several hours later, the raid group finally reached the doors to the boss room. Before the battle began, Kirito reminded Asuna to aim her Sword Skills at the throats of the Ruin Kobold Sentinels after he secured an opening. Resolving to ensure Asuna's survival, he faced the doors and followed the other raid members as they charged into the boss room and commenced battle with Illfang and his guards.

All went well until Illfang's last hit point (HP) bar reached its last third. Instead of a talwar, as he originally carried in the Beta, he now carried a nodachi. In this turn of events, Diavel was heavily wounded and subsequently died, after Kirito realized that Diavel had been a beta tester as well. Kirito then reorganized the shocked players and, with Asuna, worked together to take down the boss. After an intense battle, one of the tanks made a mistake and triggered Illfang's Tsumujiguruma. Kirito quickly countered the attack with Sonic Leap, causing the boss to tumble and allowing everyone to attack in full force while the boss was recovering. However, just as the boss's HP neared depletion, it recovered while the tanks were still recovering from their post-motion delays, prompting Kirito and Asuna to finish off the boss themselves. Kirito finally managed to deal the Last Attack on the boss and gained a unique item from it, the Coat of Midnight.



However, as the raid party celebrated their victory, someone from Group C brought up the death of Diavel and blamed Kirito for withholding information which led to Diavel's death. Kirito then realized that the beta testers needed to make peace with the regular players before the beta tester hatred went out of hand. Therefore, Kirito created a new category of players, called Beaters, who were the only ones withholding information for their own benefit and dubbed himself as one them, so that all of the hate and rage would be focused on him rather than upon all beta testers.

After this announcement, Kirito decided to open the 2nd Floor and activate its Teleport Gate. However, while he was enjoying the view of the floor, Asuna followed him to show her gratitude, as well as to relay two worded messages from Agil and Kibaou. After Kirito parted with Asuna once again, he received a message from Argo about his infamous speech. She wished to compensate him for the trouble she had caused by allowing a one-time free offer on any piece of information, thus Kirito mischievously replied by asking for the meaning behind her painted whiskers.

Reason for the Whiskers
Several minutes after parting with Asuna, Kirito reached the town of Urbus. While hiding from the players entering through the Teleport Gate that he had just opened, Kirito saw Argo running from two male players and decided to follow them using his Tracking mod. Once he reached them in an area outside of town, he identified that the two players were part of a guild from the beta test period that simulated being ninjas. Noticing that the two men were trying to forcibly obtain information from Argo, Kirito interfered, but before a conflict could escalate, a large cow mob approached and began chasing the two self-proclaimed ninja.

In the aftermath, Kirito jokingly reminded Argo about his desire to know about her whiskers, but when it seemed that Argo would show him her whisker-less face, Kirito panicked and instead inquired about the hidden skill the two ninja were interested in. After Kirito promised not to hold Argo accountable for the consequences of the quest, Kirito was led to the quest NPC for the Martial Arts Extra Skill. Only after Kirito accepted the quest given did he discover that the goal was to break a rock that was near unbreakable and that whisker markers would be drawn on his face until he could complete the quest. Thus, he realized that the reason why Argo kept the markings, even after the beta test period, was because it had become a part of her image. After three days and three nights of working on the quest, Kirito finally completed it and obtained the Martial Arts skill.

Rondo of a Fragile Blade
While Kirito visited the town of Urbus looking for a blacksmith to enhance his «Anneal Blade» to +7, he found Asuna and the two of them watched a discussion between two players because one of them, the blacksmith Nezha, failed four consecutive times to enhance the other's weapon.

Kirito decided to help Asuna gather more materials to enhance her Wind Fleuret, so they made a bet to kill the most Windwasps faster, which Kirito lost and had to treat her to dinner. Asuna chose a restaurant that he knew, and after exiting, they found out that they had received a luck buff, so he took Asuna to the blacksmith to try to enhance her weapon. Although it had a 97% success, the enhancement failed and the weapon seemingly dissipated.

After calming Asuna and taking her to an inn, Kirito returned outdoors and followed Nezha into a bar, where he encountered him talking to some friends about business. Kirito noticed something, ran to Asuna's inn, abruptly entered her room, made her materialize all her items, and at the bottom of the item pile, he uncovered her Wind Fleuret.

Upon figuring out Nezha's scam, Kirito donned a suit of armor to conceal his identity, approached Nezha and asked for a weapon upgrade. After Nezha seemingly destroyed his weapon and began apologizing, Kirito revealed himself and retrieved his sword with the One-Handed Sword mod, Quick Change.

Concerto of Black and White
Following the defeat of Asterius the Taurus King, Kirito and Asuna climbed up to the 3rd Floor. After messaging Argo that the 2nd Floor had been cleared and the 3rd Floor would be opened shortly, Kirito turned to his partner, proposing to take a detour through the forest instead of going straight to the main city. After a brief encounter with one of the forest's denizens, the two followed the sound of clashing blades to the southwest of their position for under five minutes under Kirito's request.

There, the duo found two NPCs, a Forest Elven man and a Dark Elven woman, locked in combat. Kirito explained to Asuna that the two characters were questgivers for a campaign quest that lasted until the 9th Floor, but warned that they could choose only one of the questlines, with no possibility of changing their choice afterwards. The two decided to follow the same route Kirito had chosen in the beta and assist the Dark Elf named Kizmel. Before entering the battle, Kirito informed Asuna that it was impossible for them to defeat the Forest Elf, thus he recommended focusing on defence until the Dark Elf used a special attack to end the battle upon half of their hit points being depleted, withholding the fact that the Dark Elf would die in the process.

When the two stepped into the clearing, Kirito and Asuna ignored the elves' order to leave and pointed their blades at the Forest Elf. As the elf directed his aggression towards them, the swordsman reminded his partner to prioritize defense, but grew uneasy at seeing a determined expression on the fencer's face. Twenty minutes later, to his surprise, they managed to defeat the Forest Elf just before their hit points could reach the halfway point. After a moment of shock, Kirito gingerly directed the girls' attention to the bag of sewn leaves containing the Jade Key quest item that the Forest Elf had dropped on his death. Once Kizmel retrieved the bag, he and Asuna were thanked for their assistance and invited to accompany her to the Dark Elf Base, where they would be rewarded by the Dark Elf Commander for their help.

After fifteen minutes of hiking and fighting monsters along the way, the trio reached the Dark Elf Base, hidden by a Forest-Sinking Charm. Once the players were rewarded by the Dark Elf commander, they initiated the next quest in the campaign and joined Kizmel in her tent for sleep at 19:00 after a bath and dinner. Early the next morning on December 15 eight hours later, Kirito's party left the camp for the second part of the questline. During their search for the Queen Spider's Cave, the three were forced to fight two Thicket Spiders, after defeating which the group decided to head in the direction from which the monsters had appeared to locate their nest.

Following several more battles against the spiders, Kirito, Asuna, and Kizmel found the cave that served as their nest. But as they were about to finish investigating the cave's first floor for their quest, the group noticed that Kibaou, an ax-wielding player in a chain coif, and four other members of the Aincrad Liberation Squad had entered the cave as part of the guild creation quest, prompting the trio to hide until the players reached the stairs to the second floor. However, moments after the party located a Dark Elf scout brooch required for their quest, they overheard Kibaou's party retreating from Nephila Regina, the queen spider boss of the nest. Kirito's group decided to assist the fleeing party by discreetly defeating the boss, acquiring the queen spider's poison fang in the process.

Having returned to the Dark Elf Base just before dawn, Kirito and Asuna delivered both the scout's emblem and the queen spider's fang to the commander to complete their quest. After receiving their rewards from the quest and then having a new rapier forged for Asuna, the duo elected to return to the main town. While navigating their way to the city, Kirito and Asuna found Lind, a swordsman in a chain coif, and three other members of the Dragon Knights Brigade fighting alongside the Forest Elf questgiver for the Jade Key quest against a different Dark Elf. Once Lind's party completed the quest, the boy and the girl resumed their trek to the town. Arriving there at around 10:00, they slept for two hours before accepting quests to level up. Having managed to complete their quests before 17:00, the pair attended the Clearers' strategy meeting for the 3rd Floor, after which they traveled back to the Dark Elf Base.

For the next three days, Kirito and Asuna remained at the Dark Elf Base while strengthening themselves and completing the Elf War campaign, pausing only to participate in the battle against the Field Boss The Indolent Treent on December 18. Having returned to the camp later that afternoon, they resumed working on several more quests with Kizmel's assistance for four hours before retiring for the night. Two hours later at 23:45, the boy awoke and surreptitiously journeyed to the staircase pavilion linking the 3rd and 2nd Floors for a private rendezvous with Argo. After paying the information broker for her services, he learned only one player had joined the newly-formed Dragon Knights Brigade (DKB) since the 3rd Floor's opening: a metal coif-wearing swordsman named Morte who had been inducted into the guild by Lind himself. However, he had not been present at the previous strategy or anywhere near the DKB's temporary base in Zumfut, leading the two to speculate he might be a secret weapon against the recently established Aincrad Liberation Squad (ALS).

Having separated from Argo, Kirito trekked to the Forest Elf Camp he and Asuna had discovered earlier that day, where the next sequence in the Elf War quest series required them to steal a set of orders. However, the swordsman was reluctant to accomplish that goal by leading a midnight assault on the camp and killing the Forest Elves in their sleep like he had in the beta; instead, he opted to infiltrate the camp from the rear by climbing a set of cliffs, which he could only achieve by himself. As the boy approached the cliff just before 01:00, though, he sensed someone hiding and watching him nearby, revealed to be Morte. As the way his Searching skill detected the coif-wearing player indicated he had been waiting for him and his partner for a while, Kirito was suspicious of Morte's presence. This wariness only grew when he was requested to postpone the quest for the night for an undisclosed reason, with the implicit threat Morte would alert the Forest Elves to his presence and potentially have him killed if he continued with the infiltration. When the swordsman questioned why he should accept, the other player suggested they settle the matter with a duel. Concerned at the lengths Morte was apparently willing to go just for the chance to hinder him in one quest out of a lengthy questline, the boy agreed to the proposal with the caveat that in the event he won, the other player would explain why he was doing this.

Once both swordsmen had moved to a clearing a short distance nearby, Kirito accepted Morte's duel request and drew his Anneal Blade into a neutral battle stance. To his surprise, the coif-wearing player, who only unsheathed his own Anneal Blade with just a few seconds remaining on the countdown timer, charged toward him with a Sword Skill, perfectly timing the attack so as to make the first strike without triggering the criminal code. Though initially panicked, the boy regained his composure after blocking the blow and exchanging attacks with his opponent, even landing the first damaging strike of the duel. Then he attempted to exploit a perceived opening in Morte's defense but was caught off-guard when it was revealed the coif-wearing player had switched his Anneal Blade for a Harsh Hatchet and shield via the Quick Change mod before inflicting two stunning attacks that reduced Kirito's HP to just above half. While contemplating how he was outclassed by his opponent in terms of dueling, the boy realized with how the mechanics of duels operated, Morte was attempting to kill him without becoming an orange player. At the same time, Kirito recognized from the coif-wearing player's handling of his weapon that he was the same axman who had accompanied Kibaou's party in the Queen Spider's Cave days earlier, yet joined Lind's party for the Jade Key quest only hours later. This revelation renewed his resolve to win the duel and discover Morte's motivations, despite his concerns for his life.

Carefully timing and aiming his next move, Kirito managed to disarm Morte of his shield with a Martial Arts skill, which exposed his opponent to several attacks that depleted his HP to just about half as well. Before either fighter could continue their battle, however, the coif-wearing player suddenly announced he had run out of time and took his leave, declaring the swordsman was free to resume the infiltration quest since the duel was a draw but cryptically warned it might be difficult. Once Kirito had confirmed Morte was gone, he returned to the cliffs below the Forest Elf Camp. As he drew closer, though, he was startled by a loud shout, which the boy identified as coming from two groups of players that had gathered at the entrance of a path leading to the camp.

Barcarolle of Froth
On December 21, 2022, upon ascending the spiral staircase to the 4th Floor at 13:32, Kirito paused for several seconds when he noticed that the carved relief on the doors to the floor was different from the beta test version, likely indicating a modification to the floor's terrain. The swordsman followed Asuna as she pushed the doors open, and found that the crisscrossing web of sandy canyons from the beta had been changed into rivers.

Contemplating on the alteration of the landscape, Kirito concluded that the only method of navigating the now water-filled canyons was to swim through them. As swimming was hazardous in Sword Art Online, the boy doubted that players would be left without assistance. At that moment, he noticed a tree with donut-shaped fruit standing behind the staircase pavilion and rushed towards it with Asuna. Upon managing to acquire two of the fruits by accidentally striking the tree with Senda, Kirito determined how to inflate them into inner tubes. Now having a means to traverse the floor, he left a scroll next to the pavilion for the other boss raid members, describing the procedure to obtain an inner tube.

After advising Asuna to remove her heavy equipment for easier maneuverability, Kirito stripped to his underwear himself, before testing how well the inner tubes would support their weight. Once the pair was satisfied that they would be able to float adequately, the two swam further into the river, holding onto each other's inner tubes and allowing the current to carry them downstream when they reached the middle.

Upon reaching land and reequiping their gear, the duo arrived at the northern gate of the main town of Rovia just before 14:00. As the streets had been converted into channels, the boy decided to hire an NPC-owned gondola to transport them to the Teleport Gate plaza, learning from the gondolier along the way that the gondola services would only operate within the city. After activating the Teleport Gate at around 14:12, the two retired to a small inn at the edge of the plaza, where Kirito sent a quick message to Argo requesting the location of all the quest NPCs in Rovia, before falling asleep.

After three hours of sleep, Kirito joined Asuna for an early dinner at the food carts in the plaza. Just as the two were about to start their meal, they were approached by Argo with Kirito's requested information on a map scroll. Upon paying the info broker for her services, Kirito examined the quest NPCs on the map, noticing a quest that had not been present in the beta test. Believing the quest was essential in conquering the 4th Floor, Kirito and Asuna traveled to the northwestern quadrant of Rovia, where they found the NPC quest giver Romolo in a large old building there. As the boy pondered on the required question to initiate the quest due to the NPC's unresponsiveness to the usual ones, his attention was drawn to a half-rusted, long square nail on the floor by Asuna. This allowed him to deduce that the old man was a shipwright, whom they could request to build a gondola, thus beginning the Shipwright of Yore quest.

For the first part of the quest, Kirito and Asuna journeyed to the forest southeast of Rovia to gather bear fat. Due to the girl's insistence on collecting only the highest quality versions of the quest materials, the pair trekked through the woods for three hours in search of the bear king rumored to live in the area. Immediately after they found claw markings that demarcated the bear king's territory, Kirito and Asuna were assaulted by the bear. While evading the bear's attacks, the duo discovered that they could collect Noblewood Cores by manipulating the bear into ramming trees. Deducing that the wood would be required for the next part of the quest, the two continued guiding the bear into ramming trees until they filled their free storage capacity with wood. At that point, the pair switched to active close combat and eventually defeated the bear, whereupon they returned to Rovia.

Having arrived at Romolo's home at 23:50, Kirito and Asuna delivered the bear fat and the other crafting ingredients to the NPC and configured the design of their gondola, which they decided to name The Tilnel after Kizmel's sister. Once the gondola was completed at 04:30, the boy navigated The Tilnel into Rovia's waterways to practice steering it, where they encountered several surprisingly abrasive NPC gondoliers. Upon checking his quest log, Kirito discovered the Shipwright of Yore quest prompting them to speak with Romolo, who instructed them to covertly follow a large ship carrying wooden boxes when it departed Rovia around nightfall. Exhausted from their activities, the two agreed to rest and inform Argo of their progress on the quest before proceeding any further.

After resupplying and eating lunch about ten hours later, Kirito and Asuna circumnavigated Rovia's southeastern quarter in search of the boat from Romolo's description. Once they identified the ship around 16:30, the duo stealthily followed it out of the city into a submerged dungeon, where they saw the crew handing the boxes to Fallen Elves. Though exhausted from attempting to relocate the vessel when they had lost track of it earlier while navigating the dungeon, Kirito and Asuna decided to continue the quest by investigating the boxes. Having managed to evade the guards while sneaking through the Fallen Elves' hideout, they discovered where the boxes had been stored but to their surprise found them empty. However, after eavesdropping on a conversation between the Fallen Elven General N'ltzahh and his subordinates, the boy deduced the boxes were actually meant to be dismantled into ship construction materials for an unknown scheme that would commence in five days hence. Deciding they had learned enough, the pair departed the dungeon, returning to Rovia by 03:00 for sleep.

Having rested from their night adventure, Kirito and Asuna relayed the Shipwright of Yore quest details to Argo, who published the information not connected to the Fallen Elves in her strategy guide that afternoon. While the Clearing guilds used the guide to construct enough gondolas of their own, the two finished quests and scouted the attack patterns of Biceps Archelon, the Field Boss guarding the caldera that granted access to the southern half of the 4th Floor. As soon as the raid party was ready, they began their battle against Biceps Archelon at 15:00 the next day on December 24. Once the swordsman landed the final blow to defeat the Field Boss, he navigated The Tilnel to the nearby village of Usco to celebrate their victory, being joined by Argo along the way.

While the trio briefly rested in Usco, Kirito was shocked to learn from the girls that the ALS and DKB had returned to Rovia for a Christmas party at 17:00, to which the guilds had purposely neglected to invite him. Shortly after Argo left to gather information on the village, it began snowing, prompting the boy to remember how Asuna had wished to see such an event on Christmas back on the 2nd Floor. Although his partner feigned disinterest in celebrating the holiday, he decided to invigorate her spirits by holding their own private Christmas party at a special place where they could view the snowfall better.

Once the pair finished resupplying, Kirito steered The Tilnel further downriver, arriving an hour later at the Dark Elven stronghold of Yofel Castle. Having gained entry to the fortress, the boy guided Asuna to the central courtyard, where they reunited with Kizmel.

Scherzo of Deep Night
On December 27, 2022, after reaching the 5th Floor and recounting the rampant player killing on the floor in the beta, Kirito and Asuna arrived at Karluin to activate the town's Teleport Gate and spent the night at an inn. The next day on December 28, the pair committed most of the day to fulfilling quests. As dusk fell, Kirito was requested by Asuna to teach her the basics of player versus player combat, thus the two initiated a first-strike duel. However, Kirito had to halt the duel just as he began his first attack, as Asuna refused to continue with it.

Having returned to Karluin after 19:00 that evening, Kirito led Asuna through the southern part of the town to the BLINK & BRINK inn, where he ordered a limited-supply Blue-Blueberry Tart dish as part of their dinner. When the girl drew his attention to an icon that appeared within her view after they consumed the dessert, the boy explained that the dish gave an hour-long buff that highlighted relics littered throughout the town. After spending the next hour on an impromptu relic hunt, the duo teleported to Rovia at around 21:30, where they borrowed a gondola from Agil to travel to Yofel Castle in order to claim their rewards from Viscount Yolfilis. After spending the night in the castle, Kirito and Asuna returned to Karluin at 08:20 the next morning on December 29 to continue completing quests. Having finished all the available quests in town by evening, they decided to eat dinner, during which Kirito realized that Argo's strategy guide to the 5th Floor was unusually late. Concerned that the info broker might be in a dungeon, as she could not be reached by friend message, the boy left the BLINK & BRINK after 21:00 to search for her in the catacombs beneath the city.

While hurrying through the second level of the catacombs, however, Kirito noticed Asuna's HP bar drop by ten percent. Realizing the girl had followed after him into the dungeon but fallen afoul of a trapdoor, the boy headed to where the trap let out on the third level. Along the way, he found Morte meeting with another player in a secluded room, the latter of whom to his horror was holding Asuna's Chivalric Rapier. Overwhelmed at the thought that the two men might have killed his partner, the swordsman revealed himself to confront them on how they had acquired the weapon. As he and Morte tensely glared at each other, however, his fear for Asuna's safety proved unfounded when the girl revealed herself by startling Morte's confederate into dropping the Chivalric Rapier, allowing the fencer to retrieve it. Though relieved to see his partner was alright, Kirito overheard a large group of monsters attracted by Asuna's entrance approaching their location, thus he grabbed Asuna to conceal both of them with his Hiding skill while Morte and his associate were forced to flee. Even long after the monsters moved past their position, the boy remained in place to gently comfort the girl, who was still frightened by her ordeal.

Once Asuna had recomposed herself, Kirito resumed his search for Argo with his partner in tow. Less than an hour later, they found the information broker investigating the area boss guarding the shortcut tunnel that led to the next town of Mananarena. Thanks to Argo solving a puzzle that weakened the resilient boss, the two were able to defeat it alongside the other Clearers on December 30.

Canon of the Golden Rule
At 03:00 on January 1, 2023, Kirito and Asuna teleported to Stachion, where the former drew the latter's attention to the puzzles that comprised much of the town. As the duo wandered through the city, the boy recalled how he had been ambushed by a man in a black poncho in Karluin only a few hours earlier. Predicting that another attempt would be made on his and Asuna's lives, he resolved to teach his partner how to protect herself against such inevitable encounters. With that thought in mind, Kirito informed the girl of the incident, requesting to resume their player versus player combat practices in the morning before proceeding any further with clearing the 6th Floor, to which she agreed.

After breakfast that same morning, Kirito and Asuna traveled to the Dark Elf Base on the 3rd Floor to upgrade their weapons and armor, as well as privately practice player versus player combat. After upgrading the Sword of Eventide's Accuracy and Durability and spending an hour training in player versus player combat, the pair returned to Stachion at 12:30 to meet with Lind, Hafner, and Shivata to inform the Dragon Knights Brigade on the Flag of Valor, which resulted in the two parties coming to an agreement that Kirito would continue maintaining custody of the item. After the meeting, Kirito and Asuna began working on quests in-town, including the Curse of Stachion quest series. As part of the questline, the two journeyed to Suribus by nightfall to investigate a mansion owned by Pithagrus, the previous lord of Stachion.

Having obtained a key needed for the quest from the haunted building after 21:00, Kirito decided to surprise Asuna by not warning her about an upcoming scripted event, allowing themselves to be ambushed on their way out of the house by Cylon, an apprentice of Pithagrus who had hired them to investigate his former master. Immobilized with a paralyzing gas, the duo was abducted by Cylon and his henchman to be transported back to Stachion as part of the quest. Shortly after leaving Suribus, however, the carriage carrying the pair was intercepted by Morte and his accomplice. Still paralyzed, the boy could only helplessly watch as Morte disarmed and killed Cylon so as to target them next more easily, resulting in a bonanza of the NPC's valuables falling to the ground upon his death.

Among the pile of loot, Kirito noticed a small skull-marked jar: the Namnepenth's Poison Jar Cylon had used to incapacitate them in town earlier. As Morte approached them, Kirito and Asuna independently arrived at the same plan of action: to topple the jar by blowing on it. With their combined effort, the two managed to spawn a cloud of paralyzing smoke that forced their would-be murderer to retreat. As soon as he was freed from his paralysis debuff, the boy retrieved his sword and pursued Morte out of the toxic fumes, only to find himself outnumbered as Asuna seemingly failed to escape the gas cloud. As he engaged the two men, however, his fears for his partner's safety proved to be misguided when he noticed the girl sneakily leaving the fumes with a gas mask to launch a surprise attack on Morte's dagger-wielding associate while the two assailants were preoccupied with him.

Now able to focus his attention solely on Morte, Kirito baited the axman into overextending himself during his assault by pretending to trip. As an emboldened Morte took a broad step towards him, the swordsman suddenly closed the distance between them and blocked his opponent's ax by the handle, creating an opening that allowed him to sever the man's left forearm. To both of their surprise, when Morte attempted to block a followup attack, Kirito's Accuracy-boosted Sword of Eventide unexpectedly evaded the weapon at the last second to embed itself in his opponent's heart. Just as the critical hit had reduced Morte's hit points by about seventy-five percent, Kirito was attacked by the man's associate. <!-- Though the swordsman managed to deflect the attack,{ Awkward -Gsi} he was too exhausted from the fighting to counterattack or pursue the player killers as they fled from the area.

Having returned to Suribus, after breakfast the next morning on January 2, Kirito and Asuna examined the items they had obtained the previous night, which included the golden key from Pithagrus's mansion, an iron one dropped by Cylon, two poisoned throwing picks used by Morte, and his confederate's dagger. During their survey, Kirito explained how they were now unable to complete the Curse of Stachion quest due to the player killers' interference, opening the quest log to illustrate his point. To their surprise, the quest log had updated to reflect Cylon's death and was directing them to locate where to use the keys. Though curious over how they still could continue the quest despite the quest giver being killed, the boy was more interested in the player killers' weapons, whose descriptions indicated they had been received from Fallen Elves. Concerned at the possibility that the player killers might have access to an unlimited supply of high-level poisoned weapons, the two agreed to prioritize investigating the throwing picks further. To that end, they needed to help clear the 6th Floor so they could contact Kizmel again.

After Kirito and Asuna joined the Clearers at the front lines later that day, they assisted in clearing the first of the four mountainous dungeons that sequentially blocked access to the rest of the 6th Floor. During their journey, the boy surreptitiously attempted to confirm that Joe of the ALS was Morte's accomplice, but without success. Once they gained access to the northwest sector of the Floor by defeating the first Field Boss, the duo separated from the Clearers to trek to the Dark Elven fortress of Castle Galey at the north end of the Floor, arriving there by twilight. Having reunited with Kizmel inside the castle, Kirito explained the attempt on his and Asuna's lives and showed her the Spikes of Shmargor and the Dirk of Agony, Morte's and his accomplice's weapons, which the Dark Elven knight confirmed had likely been gifted by Fallen Elves. To his relief, he learned Kizmel knew of a Dark Elven storyteller in Castle Galey that could possibly inform them how to counteract the Spikes' poison, who they could contact while working on the Elf War campaign.

Since the trio could only visit the storyteller in the early afternoon, they decided to focus on retrieving the Agate Key after breakfast the next morning on January 3. With the aid of special Dark Elven equipment, Kirito, Asuna, and Kizmel were able to enter the south sector of the 6th Floor by crossing Lake Talpha in the Floor's center without disturbing the starfish monster Ophiometus inhabiting it, thereby bypassing the need to trek through the mountainous dungeons. Having reached the key shrine, the humans were surprised to find the dungeon entrance locked with a thirty-five puzzle, when such puzzles were were supposed to be restricted to Stachion, though the Dark Elf was able to quickly solve it. Once the three had managed to secure the Agate Key, they returned to Castle Galey by 16:20 but were too late to meet with the storyteller. -->

Red-Nosed Reindeer


One day, when Kirito was walking in the labyrinth area of a lower floor, he met Sachi and the others in the Moonlit Black Cats guild. After rescuing them from the labyrinth, he hid his higher level from them and was invited into the guild. He helped them reach higher levels, taught Sachi how to fight and, had fun with them. One day, Sachi ran away from the group and Kirito used his Tracking skill to find her. He talked with her and made her forget her fear of dying, while she helped him clear his conscience of lying to the other members of the guild. One day, the group decided to hunt for treasure while their leader, Keita, was off to buy their guild base. In a Labyrinth on a higher floor, they activated a trap, causing a multitude of Dark Dwarf Miners and Granite Elementals to spawn. The members, unable to use teleport crystals due to the room being an Anti-Crystal Area, were all killed one by one, except for Kirito. He returned to their temporary headquarters in Taft to inform Keita, who committed suicide out of shock at the loss of his friends and the reveal that their newest member was a Beater.

With the approach of Christmas Eve, all of the NPCs started talking about a mysterious monster which would appear on Christmas and drop rare items if defeated, causing players to look for clues regarding its future location. However, nobody could find a good lead, as the NPCs said that it would spawn at "a certain fir tree". Originally, Kirito and Klein had not cared about the boss until they learned that it would drop a resurrection item.

When Kirito found the spawn location of the boss within the Forest of Wandering, Klein and his guild Fuurinkazan followed him there so that they could fight the boss. Moments later, the Divine Dragon Alliance (DDA), who had followed Klein and his guild, showed up. Klein told Kirito that the alliance would do anything to obtain any rare items and then told Kirito to defeat the boss while they distracted the DDA. Kirito then arrived at the correct tree, and when the bell announced midnight, the event boss, Nicholas The Renegade, spawned and was about to begin its speech, but Kirito attacked it without listening to him. After a long struggle and barely surviving, Kirito defeated the boss and obtained the Divine Stone of Returning Soul. But, to his disappointment, the item only revived players up to ten seconds after they had died. After several minutes of mourning, Kirito then gave the item to Klein and slowly walked back to his inn. He stayed up until early morning, planning to die trying to solo the floor boss once dawn broke. However, at seven o'clock, when he was about to leave, he heard a strange alarm ring in his ear and noticed an item left in his shared inventory with Sachi. Once he took out the item, a recording crystal, he heard a message left to him by Sachi before her death, urging Kirito to survive.

The Black Swordsman
Upon encountering Silica in the Forest of Wandering, Kirito saved her from a party of attacking «Drunk Apes». He apologized for being unable to save Pina, Silica's Tamed Monster, and told her that it was possible to revive Pina. After explaining the item needed, and that she needed to come with him, Kirito gave her new equipment to supplement the level needed to clear the quest. After having dinner with her and showing her the location of the Pneuma Flower, they slept and departed to the floor the next day. Kirito revealed that he was helping Silica because she reminded him of his sister.



The next day, they departed to the 47th Floor to find the Pneuma Flower on the Hill of Memories. On their way back after retrieving the flower, they were ambushed by Rosalia and the Titan's Hand guild. They attacked Kirito but were forced to surrender due to his higher level. Kirito revealed that he was looking for them because of a request from a leader of another guild, whose members were all killed, with the exception of the leader, by the Titan's Hand guild. Kirito then threatened the bandits until they agreed to voluntarily go to the prison managed by the Aincrad Liberation Force (The Army). After returning to Floria, Kirito and Silica promised to meet again in the real world.

The Progressors
Around the end of February 2024, Kirito and the other Clearers spent a week attempting to determine a way to circumvent the GeoCrawler, the Field Boss of the 56th Floor blocking the path to the local Labyrinth, as frontal attacks against it were ineffective, while its position prevented flanking the monster. On March 6, 2024, after another failed attempt to bait the GeoCrawler, Kirito entered a quarrel with Asuna due to the latter proposing to lure the boss into the village and allow it to slaughter the villagers to give them an opportunity to attack the monster while it was occupied.

Kirito protested against her suggestion, arguing that the NPCs were not mere objects. When Asuna learnt from Klein that Kirito was one level higher than her, the boy accepted her challenge to a first-strike duel to vindicate his belief, recognizing some traits of his personality from his darker times in her eyes. Although he was initially forced on the defensive by her speed and usage of short-delay-time Sword Skills, the Black Swordsman was able to trick the Flash into leaving herself open by feinting the use of a second sword, granting him the opportunity to defeat her.

The next day on March 7, during the celebration of the successful vanquishment of the GeoCrawler using an alternate method, Kirito excitedly lifted Ruru, the NPC girl who had been integral to beating the Field Boss, into the air. However, the boy received a system warning for harassing an NPC the next moment.

A Murder Case in the Area


On April 22, 2024, noticing the unusually favorable weather settings that morning, Kirito elected to take a quick nap in the fields right outside the Teleport Gate plaza of the main city of the 59th Floor. During his nap, the boy was found by Asuna, from whom he received an admonishment for not actively assisting the other players in clearing the Labyrinth. Despite offering her to rest beside him, Kirito did not actually expect to find the girl sleeping next to him when he awoke thirty minutes later. Sensing her exhaustion, the swordsman decided to let her sleep, guarding her from player killers. When Asuna finally awoke over eight hours later, the boy was offered a free meal as compensation for his consideration.

Shortly after they began eating a salad at a restaurant in Marten on the 57th Floor, the duo suddenly heard a horrified scream from outside, prompting them to rush to the source. In the town square, they found an armored player hanging by his neck from a noose from a church's second floor window, with a barbed short spear impaled into his chest, who seemingly died before anyone could help him. Convinced that the player had been killed in a duel, Kirito and Asuna quickly searched for a duel winner notice, but to no avail. Aware that the existence of a method to kill players within a safe zone would lead to panic, the two agreed to investigate the matter together.

After retrieving the spear and the rope from within the church, Kirito and Asuna returned outside to the plaza, where they found that a young woman named Yolko was the first person to witness the incident. Gently questioning her, they learned that the victim, named Kains, was one of her former guildmates who had had dinner with her just before his murder. Having escorted Yolko to the nearest inn, the pair had other players spread news of the incident, while they themselves investigated the rope and spear for any further leads on the killer. Since neither of them possessed an Appraisal skill and Asuna's blacksmith friend would be occupied with business at the time, Kirito proposed to contact Agil for assistance.

Having sent a message to Agil beforehand, Kirito traveled with Asuna to his shop in Algade on the 50th Floor, where they had the shopkeeper examine the rope and spear with his Appraisal skill. The duo learned that the spear, named Guilty Thorn, had been crafted by Grimlock, a player unknown to Agil. Although apprehensive of locating someone willing to create a weapon designed for player killing, Kirito and Asuna resolved to search for anyone on the middle floors who had been acquainted with Grimlock.

After teleporting to the Town of Beginnings, Kirito, Asuna, and Agil investigated the Monument of Life at the Black Iron Palace, where they verified that Grimlock was still alive, while a player named Kains had indeed died that day at 18:27. Having decided with Asuna to resume their search for Grimlock the following day, Kirito returned to Lindarth past 22:00 to spend the night at his current residence. However, he was immediately surrounded by several members of the Divine Dragon Alliance, led by Schmitt, upon his arrival. After being interrogated by Schmitt about Kains's death, he acquiesced to surrendering the murder weapon to him.

Upon meeting with Yolko at 10:00 the following morning, Kirito and Asuna learned from her that Grimlock, Schmitt, and Yolko herself had once been part of the Golden Apple, a guild that had acquired a rare agility-boosting ring about half a year prior, yet subsequently collapsed when their guild leader Griselda was murdered for the ring shortly afterwards. Believing whoever killed Kains was connected to Griselda's death, the two secured Yolko's stay at her inn for several days to keep her safe. Afterwards, Kirito suggested consulting with Heathcliff for advice on how to proceed with the investigation, due to his knowledge of Sword Art Online's mechanics.

Once Heathcliff joined them thirty minutes later, Kirito led him and Asuna to a restaurant deep within the mazelike city. While they waited for their lunch, the boy proposed several theories on how the Inner Area murder could have happened, all of which were debunked. After the meal, Kirito asked his partner for clarification on the guild leader's lengthy recommendation not to rely on secondhand sources of information, to which he learned they should question the motives behind Golden Apple's dissolution over the rare ring. Therefore, he agreed to the girl's suggestion to inquire Schmitt for his part of the story on the incident in hopes of acquiring new information.

Having deduced Schmitt would seek the most secure location in which to hide, Kirito and Asuna journeyed to the Divine Dragon Alliance's headquarters on the 56th Floor shortly after 14:00, where they persuaded the heavily armored lancer to speak with them. While interrogating Schmitt on the whereabouts of Grimlock, Griselda's husband and the main suspect in Kains's murder, the pair learned the blacksmith used to frequent a NPC restaurant; however, the man insisted on meeting with Yolko before he would reveal the establishment's name. Though confused by the nature of the request, they reluctantly accepted it after Yolko agreed via friend message. Once they had escorted Schmitt to Yolko's inn by sundown, Kirito and Asuna kept guard as the former Golden Apple members speculated who could have killed Kains and why. In the middle of the discussion, however, a black, barbed throwing dagger suddenly appeared in Yolko's back which had been facing her room's window. The boy rushed to the young woman's side, but her avatar fell through the window to disintegrate on the street below before he could reach her.

Warmth of the Heart


Around noon of June 25, 2024, due to Asuna's referral, Kirito visited Lisbeth's Smith Shop and requested Lisbeth to create for him a sword that was on par with his «Elucidator». When the blacksmith offered her best sword, he expressed his dissatisfaction with its light weight and decided to test its durability by striking it against the Elucidator, accidentally shattering the former. Apologizing to an indignant Lisbeth for destroying her masterpiece, Kirito casually agreed to her demand to accompany him in gathering the materials to craft a weapon that would surpass his own blade. Thus, the two traveled to the West Mountain to obtain a «Crystallite Ingot» to forge what would eventually be known as «Dark Repulser».

October, 2024
After two years into SAO, Kirito was currently on the front lines which were now located on the 74th Floor on October 17, 2024. As he left the Labyrinth, Kirito found and killed a Ragout Rabbit, the meat of which he later gave to Asuna to cook. He was then forced on a mapping run with Asuna. After defeating Kuradeel, Asuna's bodyguard, in a duel, the two departed for the Labyrinth the next day on October 18. Together they found the boss room. While resting at a nearby safe zone, they encountered an elite unit of the «Aincrad Liberation Force» (The Army), whom Kirito and Asuna assumed would try to challenge the boss. They chased after them in case the platoon did something unreasonable, but «The Army» platoon started fighting the boss before they could reach them. Kirito told them to teleport out, but one of the soldiers told him that their crystals would not work in the boss room as it was an Anti-Crystal Area.



Upon arriving, Asuna impulsively ran in to help them, and Kirito quickly followed her. He was forced to activate his «Dual Blades» secret skill to save Asuna and the others. After the boss fight, word about Kirito's ability spread throughout Aincrad. Asuna asked for a temporary leave of absence from her guild and Heathcliff, the leader, said that he would only allow permission if Kirito defeated him in a duel. If Kirito lost, he would have to join the Knights of the Blood guild. Kirito accepted the challenge and was on the verge of winning, but, at the last moment, Heathcliff moved with impossible speed. The duel ended with Kirito's loss, forcing him to abide by their deal. He was given a KoB outfit, and after a few days, sent to a mandatory training session with Kuradeel on October 23. After the latter killed Godfree, the vanguard who wanted to see Kirito's skills, and revealed his plan to kill him, Asuna quickly came to Kirito's aid. After Kuradeel successfully feigned a surrender, he attacked Asuna after she lowered her rapier, and almost killed her. Kirito quickly intercepted, and though he lost his left arm in the process, he killed Kuradeel using the Martial Arts Sword Skill, Embracer.

After this, Kirito announced his feelings for Asuna, and the two asked for another leave after the incident, which Heathcliff accepted.

The Day Before
After proposing to Asuna at 21:00 on October 23, 2024, Kirito considered where to live quietly for their honeymoon. Thus, he recalled an isolated log house on the 22nd Floor that he had encountered a year and a half prior, at a time when he had lacked the funds to purchase the estate. Wishing to spend his newlywed life with Asuna there, the boy proposed the option to the girl.

The next day past 14:00 on October 24, after sending messages to their friends and settling their request for a temporary withdrawal from the Knights of the Blood, Kirito and Asuna teleported to the 22nd Floor. As they drew close to where Kirito had found the house, the boy hurried after the girl when she enthusiastically rushed ahead, but was surprised to see the home no longer there.

Morning Dew Girl


While Asuna and Kirito were on their honeymoon on the 22nd Floor, they heard of a rumor of a ghost in the forest and decided to go check it out on October 30, 2024. In the forest, they found a young girl who went by the name of Yui, who they suspected was a traumatized player who had regressed into a baby. However, they were unable to find a Color Cursor on her, meaning she was not a player, NPC, or monster. Despite this finding, they deduced that it was most likely that she was a player. After taking her to their home and reading the Lost & Found/Q&A section of the newspaper for possible people searching for this mysterious player with no luck, they decided to go to the «Town of Beginnings» to find her parent/guardian, if they were still there. Upon their arrival at the «Town of Beginnings» the next day on October 31, they travelled around town in hope of finding her parents and were eventually led to a nearby church, serving as an orphanage for kids who were trapped in SAO. Even here, there were no signs of Yui's parents.



Then on November 1, they went to a Hidden Dungeon to save Thinker, the nominal leader of the Aincrad Liberation Force (The Army), who was trapped within its deepest levels. Yui watched Kirito easily handle the Scavenge Toads and was amazed by his fighting skills. After reaching the safe area in the dungeon, Kirito told Yulier to take Yui into the safe area. The safe area contained a GM module, and after touching it, Yui suddenly remembered what she was. As the boss, The Fatal Scythe, was about to deal the final blow on Kirito and Asuna, Yui went in front of them. To their shock, the boss's attack on her was deflected due to her «Immortal Object» status, and Yui defeated The Fatal Scythe with the «Object Eraser». The two discovered that Yui was actually a Mental Health Counseling program and that the Cardinal System would delete her. When this happened, Kirito used the still active console to save her data into his NerveGear in the form of Yui's Heart. Kirito and Asuna planned to recreate her as Yui once they escaped from SAO.

November, 2024
During the second week of their honeymoon on November 6, 2024, Kirito and Asuna received a call: the boss room of the 75th Floor had been found. They returned to the front lines the next day on November 7 and participated in the battle. During the battle, Kirito, Asuna, and Heathcliff managed to hold back the incredibly powerful boss while the rest of the players attacked it. Afterwards, Kirito had an intuitive realization; he first attacked Heathcliff, revealed his "Immortal Object" status, and concluded that Heathcliff was none other than Kayaba Akihiko himself. Kayaba lauded Kirito and announced that he would be waiting on the 100th Floor as the final boss. A KoB member attacked Heathcliff, prompting him to paralyze everyone in the room. After that, Heathcliff offered Kirito a chance at a one-versus-one duel, declaring that defeating him would clear the game, and the surviving players would be logged out of SAO.

Kirito agreed despite Asuna's pleads to fall back. After a few minutes of fighting, Kirito became enraged and used a Sword Skill, and Kayaba, knowing the system all too well, took advantage of the post-motion delay to finish him off. However, Asuna intercepted the blow, despite her paralysis, and died from the attack. Kirito, filled with despair, attacked Kayaba thoughtlessly and was quickly struck down.



Through a final push of his will, before his body was deleted by the system, Kirito stabbed Heathcliff in the chest with Asuna's Lambent Light. Heathcliff and Kirito both vanished and were transported up to an area located above Aincrad, along with Asuna. Akihiko explained his reasons as for why he created SAO before vanishing along with his castle. During these final moments, Asuna and Kirito revealed their names: Yuuki Asuna and Kirigaya Kazuto, to each other. Shortly after, Kazuto woke up in a hospital bed, his body frail and weak. He rose from the bed, vowing to find Asuna.

After SAO was cleared and Kazuto woke up in a Tokyo hospital, he wandered off to find Asuna, but failed. Soon after, he was visited by Kikuoka Seijirou, a representative of the «SAO Case Victims Rescue Force». Kazuto inquired about Asuna's whereabouts in exchange for sharing information about the SAO incident with him. After knowing Asuna's condition, he later attempted to return to the world of SAO via his NerveGear to find her, but the SAO servers had shut down.

January, 2025


Two months after SAO was ended, Kazuto returned home to his family and had completed his rehabilitation, which allowed him to move freely again. Thus, he started to visit Asuna on occasion. During one of such visits on January 19, 2025, Asuna's father, Yuuki Shouzou, and Sugou Nobuyuki came into the hospital room. After Nobuyuki was introduced, he told Asuna's father that he planned on having Asuna wear her bridal gown the next week. After Asuna's father's departure, he revealed his true nature and started stroking Asuna's hair while stating that he had the right to marry her, as he was in charge of maintaining the servers that hosted her conscience. He invited Kazuto to the wedding, leaving the boy helpless to do anything.



That evening, Kazuto's sister Suguha found him alone in his room in a state of deep despair and self-loathing. After telling his sister that Asuna was out of his reach and how useless he felt, he began crying like a child in front of her. After closing the window, Suguha comforted her brother and encouraged him not to give up so easily, and then gently lowered him onto his bed, where awhile later, his cries ceased.



When Kazuto awoke the next morning, January 20, he found Suguha sleeping next to him in her pajamas. He then recalled what had happened the night before and, due to Suguha's encouragement, had renewed his resolve to save Asuna. Shortly after, he received an e-mail from Agil that contained a picture of a virtual world, where a bird cage could be seen in the foreground. In that cage was a girl who looked exactly like Asuna. Kazuto immediately left to meet Andrew Gilbert Mills (Agil) at the Dicey Cafe. There, he was shown a package for a new VRMMO game called ALfheim Online. After learning more about the game, as well as the AmuSphere, the successor of the NerveGear used to play it, Kazuto discovered that the picture he had received earlier was taken inside of the game, at the top of the World Tree. After noticing that the game was designed by RECT Progress Inc. and remembering that Nobuyuki, who worked there, said that he was in charge of the SAO servers, he realized that it could not have been just a coincidence. Thinking to himself that contacting the Ministry of Internal Affairs without concrete evidence was a bad idea, Kazuto asked Andrew to let him have the game client to personally confirm whether Asuna really was trapped in ALO.



Upon returning home, Kazuto inserted the ALO client into his NerveGear and dove into the game. At the character creation screen, he inserted his character name and then continued to choose his character's race. Due to being pressed for time and not planning to play the game too seriously, he selected the Spriggan race because of its initial black-themed equipment rather than based on the race's strengths and weaknesses. Kirito was then sent into a vortex of light and entered the game world, floating in the air above the Spriggan capital. However, while free falling towards the Spriggan capital, a glitch occurred, and the area below Kirito collapsed into darkness.



After a seemingly endless descent and landing on his face instead of his feet, he found himself in the Ancient Forest. Due to some bad feeling, Kirito tried to open the main menu, and finally realized that commands in ALO were controlled with the left hand, instead of the right hand as it was in SAO. While the logout function was available and his HP and MP values were normal for a starting character, his avatar had over 8 skills already learnt, most of which were nearly or fully completed. However, those skills seemed strangely familiar to him, and he realized that all of the skills he had were identical to his SAO skills, except his Dual Blades skill.



Hoping to find more clues about what was happening, he checked his item window, only to find dozens of lines consisting of enigmatic numbers and characters. That being said, all the items that he had in SAO, though no longer usable, confirmed that his SAO save data was brought over to ALO for some reason. Realising this, Kirito hoped that one specific item would be among the various unusable items and soon found the item he was looking for: MHCP-001, in other words, Yui's Heart. After he tapped the crystal twice, Yui appeared.



After Yui checked the system, Kirito learned from her that the ALO server was a copy of the SAO servers, using the same graphics engine, but an older version of the Cardinal System and different game components, and that the game used an almost identical save data and skill proficiency format to the one SAO used, which was why he was able to inherit his skills, with the exception of data denoting HP and MP. She also warned him that his items were corrupted and should be disposed of before the system's error detection protocol detected them. As for his abnormal skill values, Yui told Kirito that he should be fine unless a GM checked them directly. Kirito asked Yui what was she supposed to be in the game, and she took the form of a Navigation Pixie. Later, Kirito learned how to fly with a controller from her. Soon after, they found that some other players were approaching, one being chased by three others. Hearing that, Kirito decided to go take a closer look at it and used his controller to fly to the scene of the battle.



Once there, due to not having practiced landing, he crash-landed near the 3 Salamanders and a Sylph, named Leafa, who the Salamanders were hunting. While Leafa told Kirito to run away as she noticed that he was using starting equipment, he only reproached the Salamanders for ganging up on the girl, angering the Salamanders. Two of them moved in to sandwich him, but Kirito easily stopped the first strike and threw the Salamander into his teammate who was still airborne. After confirming with Leafa that it was alright to kill the Salamanders, Kirito drew his sword, and charged at one of the Salamanders and killed him in one swing. The other Salamander was mercilessly bisected shortly after. Looking up at the leader of the party, Kagemune, Kirito relaxed and asked whether he was going to fight as well, but Kagemune only smiled as he refused.



As soon as Kagemune had flown away and the Remain Lights of the two other Salamanders disappeared, Leafa asked the boy about what he expected her to do now, to which he responded by joking about her hugging him. Before Leafa was able to retaliate, Yui emerged out of Kirito's breast pocket, telling Leafa that she would only let Mama and herself stick to Papa. Kirito reacted by wrapping both of his hands around the Pixie, not knowing how to explain what she was to Leafa, who then asked whether Yui was a Private Pixie, a prize of a lottery that took place at the launch of the game, which Kirito confirmed to cover Yui's true nature. Leafa, who had already loosened up after the encounter with Yui, then found out that Kirito got lost and decided to thank Kirito by treating him to a drink, which Kirito planned to use as an opportunity to find out more about ALO, especially about the World Tree. At Kirito's request, the duo decided to travel to the nearest town, Swilvane. Before they depart, Kirito noticed that Leafa was about to take flight without using the controller and asked her how she was able to do it, therefore she showed him the trick to Voluntary Flight.



After a humorous first attempt at flying without a controller, with Leafa's help Kirito soon grew accustomed to Voluntary Flight and they proceeded with flying towards Swilvane at high speed. Unfortunately, Kirito realized he still did not know how to land and crashed into the Tower of Wind. At the city, after a brief encounter with Recon, Kirito and Leafa entered an inn and pub where they ordered their refreshments.



Kirito then asked Leafa about the World Tree, as he wanted to get to the top of tree, and learned that it was the Grand Quest of ALO, as the first starting race to reach the top of the tree would be turned into the legendary race of ALFs and that nobody had managed to complete this quest yet, even though the game had been online for a year now. Surprised by Kirito's determination to reach the top of the tree as soon as possible, no matter how difficult of a task it was, and seeing the familiar despair in his eyes despite his smile, Leafa volunteered to take him to the capital of Alfheim, Alne, where the entrance to the World Tree lay. As there was no method of instantaneous travel in ALO, they had to fly to the city, which would take hours. As Leafa had to log out already, they agreed to meet up again the next day and Leafa told him that he can use the inn room to log out, as logging out instantly can only be done inside the player's home territory, by using a tent, or an inn if outside of the player's home territory.



Puzzled by Leafa's actions, though grateful for her help, Kirito decided to follow her advice and use the inn room to log out. As a sudden change from standing to a lying down caused a strong sense of vertigo, he decided to use the "sleep off" approach to log out, literally falling asleep, which would automatically log him off. As he laid in bed, Yui returned to her original form and asks whether she could sleep with him before he logged out. Although surprised by the request, understanding Yui's wish to be exposed to new data, he agreed and made room for her. He fell asleep as he promised to Yui that, as soon as Asuna was safe, they would purchase a house in-game and live as a family again.



As Kirito and Leafa left for the World Tree the next day on January 21, under Leafa's advice, Kirito decided to buy some new equipment to replace his starting equipment. As a replacement for his beginner's sword, he purchased a sword as large as him. Both departed Swilvane by the Tower of Wind to gain an altitude boost. After fighting some aerial monsters, both eventually took a rest after their wings' flying time was depleted. They then decided to rotational logout to have one of them protect the other's body while the other took a short break in the real world.

Kirito and Leafa fought through many orcs while heading towards the neutral mining town of Legrue. As Leafa explained to Kirito about Spriggan magic, she also told him to remember the chanting, as it could save their lives one day. Yui detected many players coming behind them, and so both fairies hid in a gap in the wall, and Leafa cast a hiding spell to cover the gap up. After a short time of waiting, Kirito noticed a bat coming towards them, and Leafa realized that it was a high-level tracer. She quickly destroyed it and told him to run, stating that the bat was a fire-attribute familiar, and therefore Salamanders were pursuing them.



As the two tried to reach Legrue, the Salamanders cast a high-level Earth Wall spell to block the entrance of the town. Kirito asked Leafa to act as support by healing him when he was hit while engaging the enemy head-on. The Salamander party cornering them consisted of three tanks and nine mages. Kirito tried to attack the tanks, dealing some damage, but three healer mages quickly healed them while the other six offense mages then cast offensive fire spells at Kirito, greatly injuring him. As the fight progressed, he tried to get close to the tanks and tried to move their shields, but was forced to jump back after the mages cast another set of fireballs on him. As Leafa provided Kirito a magic-protection shield by Yui's advice, Kirito transformed into a Gleam Eyes-like creature and easily ruined the Salamanders' formation, sparing one to interrogate. After being bribed with the items Kirito had received for killing the other Salamanders, the mage told them why they had gone after the two. After the mage was given the items and happily left, Leafa wondered why Recon was sending messages and under Kirito's advice, logged out. After logging back in, she told him what the problem was, and that he should work for the Salamanders, but he refused and decided to assist Leafa with her problem.



After rushing past groups of Orcs, they exited the caves, and headed towards Butterfly Valley to try to stop the Salamander attack force from killing leaders of Cait Sith and Sylph that are going to sign treaties. As the leader of the Lancers, Eugene, was about to order the lancers to attack them, Kirito landed with a boom, and expressed a wish to speak with the commander of the attack force. After Kirito told the commander that he was an ambassador to the Spriggan-Undine alliance, being there for "trade" reasons, and that the Salamander attack would be considered as a war declaration against the four races, Eugene thought that he was bluffing because of his gear and having no guards with him. Thus Eugene challenged Kirito, which he accepts and both began to fight. By taking advantage of his Dual Blades proficiency in SAO, as well as a Smokescreen spell to surprise his opponent, he quickly defeated Eugene and left players who watched the battle were in a state of shock at the fact that a Spriggan had managed to defeat the strongest player in ALO with weapons inferior to Eugene's Demonic Sword Gram that have magical ability. Under Kirito's request, Eugene was revived, and, after being revived, he contemplated on Kirito's statement of the Spriggan-Undine alliance. Kagemune then came out from the Salamander ranks and lied about Kirito having ties with an Undine, "confirming" this alliance, thus Eugene and his troops left on good terms, as they did not want to wage war on 4 races simultaneously.

After the fight, the two leaders attempted to seduce Kirito into joining their respective army, however he declined their offers, stating that he needed to get to the World Tree to see someone. As the alliance had just started and the group was low on money to buy gear, he gave them a large package of coins each worth 100,000 Yrd, which they gratefully accepted. He quickly left with Leafa and both flew towards Alne.

Before they could reach Alne in the early morning hours of January 22, the two triggered a trap that forcefully transported them to Jötunheimr, a large and high-difficulty maze. There, they found and helped Tonky against a group of Undine players and left the place successfully with it to reach Alne. After that, Kirito and Leafa decided to take a rest. After being notified by the system that maintenance was shutting the servers off for three hours, they decided to log off at an inn not too expensive, as Kirito was now broke. He asked Yui to find a cheap inn, and she pointed them to one and they both logged off.

In the morning in the real world, Kazuto greeted Suguha and they decided to go the hospital together. Kazuto then told his sister that the government plans to use a local school to hold the students from SAO. The two later arrived at the hospital where Asuna was being cared for. After the visit, they go back to ALfheim. While walking through a street of Alne, Yui told Kirito that Asuna was right above them. In a desperate act to reach her, he blasted off to the World Tree, hoping to find her there.

As Kirito was flying towards the World Tree, Leafa tried to warn him of a barrier the admins had put after several players nearly managed to reach the top of the Tree that way. He tried to attack the barrier but to no avail. Yui then used her Warning mode to contact her, and Asuna eventually heard her voice. She then dropped an admin card, and Kirito caught the card, not knowing what it was but knowing that Asuna had heard them. As Kirito went to the base of the World Tree to get to the top, two Guardian statues blocked the door and asked if he was willing to challenge the Grand Quest.



Kirito quickly accepted the challenge and ascended towards the top of the tree. As he flew upwards, multiple Guardian Knights spawned and tried to stop him. After killing several of them, he tried to speed up and reach the top, but got hit by a ranged guardian. More ranged guardians appeared and tried to stop him; however, he ignored the arrows and tried to get to the top. The melee guardians then started throwing their swords at Kirito, successfully hitting him and causing him to stop and bleed out from the damage, turning into a Remain Light.

Kirito began to have doubts about his strength, having flashbacks from SAO. He was then rescued by Leafa, who revived him outside the World Tree. As he apologized to Leafa and told her that he needed to rescue Asuna, Leafa suddenly realized that Kirito was actually Kazuto, and called him big brother. Kirito then realized that Leafa was actually Suguha, who logged out in disbelief. Kirito quickly logged out of the game and tried to comfort Suguha, but to no avail. Afterwards, Kazuto leaned against the door before falling in sorrow.



After some thinking, Kazuto got back up and told Suguha that he would be waiting for her on the north terrace of Alne. There, he was soon joined by Leafa, who proposed having a duel to express their feelings. During the battle, Leafa fell and let her sword go, intending to be slashed by Kirito, but instead he caught her, shocking both of them. Kirito then told Leafa that he wanted to apologize to her, but he did not know what to say and wanted her to have a free hit on him. After both quickly apologized to each other, they met up with Recon and the three begin their second attempt on the World Tree.

As Yui believed he could reach the top because of his speed, Kirito decided to play the role of the attacker, while asking Recon and Leafa to provide support as healers. Guardian Knights began to spawn again, and Kirito easily killed many of them, amazing Recon in the process. As Kirito tried to reach the top, a large number of Guardians blocked him, and while healing Kirito, a few Guardians began to target Recon and Leafa. Recon quickly took some out, and then used the Sacrifice spell to remove a large number of Guardians. Kirito then tried to get to the top again, but another large group of Guardians blocked him and they quickly refilled the gap caused by Recon's Sacrifice spell. The Guardians began to charge towards Kirito, impaling him multiple times and prompting Leafa to heal him.



As Leafa was about to be attacked, the Sylphs and a squad of Cait Sith Dragoons arrived on time. They stated that they had come to help Kirito as he had helped them with their preparations greatly earlier. The combined forces destroyed many Guardians, and Leafa tossed her sword to Kirito. Kirito then used the two swords to wipe out many Guardians with his slashing speed and ended up at the top of the World Tree. As Kirito tried to open the door, he was unable to because, as Yui told, the door was not locked by the quest, but by admins instead. As the Guardians spawned and surrounded him, he suddenly remembered about the admin card Asuna had dropped to him earlier. He gave it to Yui, who transferred the code to open the door, reaching upper levels of the World Tree.



As Yui and Kirito explored the area, Kirito realized that the Floating City atop the World Tree had been a lie along with the quest. Yui then found Asuna's location, and, after they reached the location, removed the gates, allowing Kirito and Asuna to meet again. Kirito suddenly drew his sword as he sensed an enemy coming, and Yui disappeared. The scene then transformed into a black space, and Oberon appeared, binding them both with gravity magic. Oberon then stabbed Kirito with his sword, and then sets the Pain Absorption level to 8, causing Kirito to feel some of the pain.



As Kirito helplessly watched Oberon abuse Asuna, Kayaba appeared and told him to re-think the fact that human will could overcome the system and give him his admin ID and password. Kirito then came to his senses and got back up. When Oberon tried to kick him back down, Kirito stopped the blow midway and accessed Kayaba's ID "Heathcliff" and then revoked Oberon's admin privileges. Enraged, Oberon tried to spawn Excalibur, but the system ignored his request. Kirito then repeated the same command to spawn one and gave it to him, while setting the Pain Absorption level to 0, which made Oberon panic. Kirito then told him not to run, as Kayaba had never run from him during their fight. Oberon cursed Kayaba for interfering with him, even after his death, and he tried to attack Kirito, but Kirito parried his attacks with no effort and then quickly sliced and dismembered him which let Oberon started trembling from the pain and tossed him up to stab him in the right eye, killing him, and then freed Asuna.



Kirito then logged Asuna out, and after he was the only one left, Kayaba came out and talked with him again. Kayaba gave Kirito «The Seed», and then told him he could do whatever he wanted with it. He then disappeared, and Kirito called for Yui and promised her that the two would come back to ALfheim and start again. Kirito quickly logged out to the real world, where he was met by Suguha, who was worried about him. At that moment, he informed Suguha that Asuna was back in the real world and Suguha let him go to the hospital so that he could meet her again, which he quickly agreed to. He got his bike and started riding towards the hospital where Asuna was being taken care of.



As Kazuto ran towards the entrance of the hospital, he was cut by an attacker. He then realized that his right arm was bleeding, and identified his attacker as Nobuyuki, who, despite being in a lot of pain, declared his intent to kill him. As Kazuto was unable to defend himself from Nobuyuki because of his bleeding arm, Nobuyuki tried to kill him but missed because of his eye being blurry. As Nobuyuki tried to perform the finishing blow again, Kazuto's thoughts of Asuna gave him the willpower to stop Nobuyuki and disarm him. Kazuto then smashed Nobuyuki's face into a van and put the knife to his neck. Thinking of all the things Nobuyuki had done to him and Asuna, Kazuto almost killed him but in the end let him live.

Kazuto headed towards the hospital, where he reported Nobuyuki and got some of his wounds treated, before grabbing a guest card so that he could go to Asuna's room. He then met Asuna for the first time in real life and, hugging each other, they shared a kiss.

May 2025


Months later, in school, Kazuto had just finished a class and headed outside to meet up with Asuna. Kazuto told her about all the recent news, also mentioning the arrest of Nobuyuki and the end of his inhumane experiments. After a while of chatting, Kazuto quickly spaced out while thinking about Kayaba and his seed. After Asuna got Kirito out of his train of thoughts, the two enjoyed the sandwiches Asuna had made for lunch.



After school, the two and Suguha head towards the Dicey Cafe to attend the Aincrad Capture Commemorative Party. As they opened the doors of the cafe, they were surprised that everyone was already there. Shortly afterwards, everyone congratulated Kazuto for completing SAO. Kazuto then went to the bar, where he was joined by Ryoutarou, Thinker and Andrew. Andrew showed the progress of «The Seed» to the three.



Kazuto later logged into ALO, which was now owned by a new company, to bring Leafa to the afterparty. After he caught her falling from the sky, Leafa asked him to dance with her. Later, Kirito grabbed Leafa's hand and took her near the World Tree, where he showed Leafa the Floating Castle New Aincrad, and told her that they were going to clear all one hundred floors this time. More players showed up, heading towards New Aincrad and Kirito muttered something that surprised Leafa and Asuna, before encouraging them to start moving.

Phantom Bullet Arc
On December 7, 2025, Kazuto was called by Kikuoka Seijirou, the man in charge of net crimes division, to a pastry shop to chat. Kazuto learned about the GGO players found dead in their homes, as well as the player calling himself «Death Gun» who harassed them prior to their disconnection from the game. After hearing about the potential threat to MMO game security Kazuto agreed to investigate GGO for a fee, and notified Asuna of his decision to convert his avatar, though he kept the reason secret.

Six days later, a hospital room was set up for Kazuto to FullDive in, with Aki Natsuki, the nurse who had taken care of him during the SAO incident, assigned to observe him for any abnormalities in his condition during the dives. Upon entering GGO at the hospital, Kirito was stunned at the extremely feminine appearance of his avatar. Though initially disappointed and discomforted at its lack of intimidation and aggressive aura, Kirito determined it would still help him be conspicuous among the players of GGO and attract Death Gun's attention.

Having become lost while trying to find the location where registration for the Bullet of Bullets was being held, Kirito attempted to ask another player for directions. Upon realizing that the person was female, he became concerned that the girl would think he was just flirting with her, rather than being genuinely lost. However, being mistaken for a girl due to his appearance, Kirito was instead offered her assistance. Kirito decided to make use of the misunderstanding and inquired on the location of the administrative office and an equipment store. As the girl was heading for the administrative building as well, Kirito was escorted to the marketplace along the way.



At the marketplace, the two realized that Kirito only had starter funds after his conversion. When Sinon offered to lend some credits, Kirito declined the offer due to guilt and instead enquired about gambling within GGO as a way to quickly earn money. Thus, he was directed to the bullet dodging game named Untouchable!, the objective of which was to get as close to an NPC cowboy gunman as possible while dodging his gunfire. After learning the mechanics of Bullet Lines from Sinon, Kirito decided to try the game himself. Using his previous experience with NPC targeting, he managed to evade the cowboy's shots by following his eyes, and touch the NPC's chest, winning the jackpot.



Kirito used all his funds in buying a photon sword, a Kagemitsu G4, an FN Five-Seven and some equipment to participate in the 3rd Bullet of Bullets event. After a rush through the city, he and Sinon entered the tournament. During the tournament, Kirito used an original battle style of deflecting incoming bullets with his sword. Kirito and Sinon managed to get into the finals held the next day, although Kirito was shocked by his encounter with Death Gun.



The next day, Kazuto was confronted by Suguha, who discovered that he was mentioned in a video games news site as one of the participants of the Bullet of Bullets tournament. Kazuto waited for the afternoon to head to the hospital. Before he logged into GGO, he shared his guilt of having killed three Laughing Coffin members to stop them from harming others and then forcefully forgetting about their deaths. In response, he was comforted by Natsuki, who reminded him of his right to save others and himself. Upon entering the game, where he saw Sinon and asked her to tell him more about the finals. In the tournament finals, while trailing Pale Rider by hiding underwater, he was able to avoid the Satellite Scan and thus unintentionally sneak up on Sinon. He and Sinon then witnessed Death Gun dispatching Pale Rider despite their efforts to stop him. Afterwards, they trailed Death Gun to the central city on the stage, where Kirito took out Musketeer X, mistaking her for Death Gun, and returned just in time to save Sinon from the real Death Gun, who had been hiding with a Metamaterial Optical Camouflage Mantle. They managed to escape and hid in the desert, where Sinon told him her past, which Kirito responded to by comforting her.



After talking for a while, they figured out the secret behind Death Gun: he attained the addresses of some of the players by using his mantle to peep on them while they were using the in-game terminals and inputting personal details. His accomplice would then kill the selected targets in the real world by injecting a lethal dose of a drug. Realising this, Kirito and Sinon prepared a plan to defeat Death Gun, using Kirito as bait. Initiating their plan, Kirito stepped out of the cave while Sinon prepared her equipment. Trusting Sinon to take care of their other opponent, Yamikaze, Kirito focused on sensing for Death Gun's location. After Sinon defeated Yamikaze and destroyed Death Gun's sniping equipment, Kirito engaged with him in battle, in which Kirito discovered the identity of his opponent. During the battle, Kirito had a difficult time gaining the upper hand. However, he later sensed Asuna's hand which reminded him of the existence of his pistol, which he then used to imitate the «Double Circular» Sword Skill with the gun and his sword, finally killing Death Gun. Once they were the only two competitors left, Kirito and Sinon exchanged personal details and planned what to do next. The tournament then ended when Sinon used a gift grenade to have them both killed at the same time, thus ending the tournament as a tie.

After logging out, Kirito hurried over to Shino's house and arrived just in time to save her from Death Gun's first accomplice. Two days later, he visited Shino's school and took her to meet Seijirou. After discussing the recent incident, he brought her to the Dicey Cafe, where they met with Asuna and Rika, as well as a woman Shino had saved during the incident in the post office.

Calibur
At 09:30 on December 28, 2025, Kazuto was shown by Suguha an article detailing the discovery of the Holy Sword Excalibur. As the weapon had not actually been acquired yet, Kazuto resolved to retrieve the blade before anyone else, and thus gathered Asuna, Keiko, Rika, Ryoutarou, and Shino for an expedition to Jötunheimr.

Mother's Rosario
After seeing both Lisbeth and Leafa relatively easily defeated by «Absolute Sword Yuuki», Kirito decided to try dueling her himself, using only a single sword. Midway during the duel, he had a suspicion about his opponent and asked her whether she had completely become a resident of the virtual world. Instead of a response, Kirito was assaulted with a high-speed attack and lost the duel.

Kirito later appeared in front of the 27th Floor boss room to prevent a large guild from interfering with the Sleeping Knight's attempt at beating the Floor Boss. As the guild attempted to launch various spells at him, Kirito revealed his Outside System Skill «Spell Blast» - using Sword Skills to strike the centre of the incoming spells to neutralise them. He then drew his second sword, the «Holy Sword Excalibur», to distract the guild long enough for the Sleeping Knights to enter the boss room. He, along with Klein, held off the guild for three minutes before succumbing to the overwhelming numbers.

Several days later, Kazuto pointed Asuna to the hospital Yuuki was in when Asuna told him she wanted to meet her again. He then helped the Sleeping Knights clear the 28th Floor with his friends. Sometime later, he faced against Yuuki in the ALO Duel Tournament finals using only a single sword but ended up losing again.

Alicization Arc
Recruited by Kikuoka for an experiment with a new form of VR system, developed by the mysterious company Rath, Kirito awoke in a fantasy style forest with no memory of how he got there. There, he met a teenage woodcutter named Eugeo, who seemed too lifelike to be an NPC.

Alicization Beginning
Kazuto met Shino at the Dicey Cafe, where they talked while waiting for Asuna to arrive. When she arrived, they showed Shino that Asuna was able to monitor Kazuto's pulse via the monitor he had implanted for his part-time job. They proceed to talk about Kazuto's part-time job, which involved FullDiving using a new generation FullDive machine. After Kazuto's long explanation about the theory of the new generation device, they departed and Kazuto insisted to accompany Asuna to her house. But just before arriving, he noticed that they were being followed, and faced the stalker, Kanamoto Atsushi (Johnny Black). He defended Asuna, but was injected with Succinylcholine and was later taken in an ambulance. Although Kazuto managed to survive, he suffered severe brain damage. Secretly, Kazuto's body was intercepted by the Kikuoka Seijirou as he was supposedly being transferred to a different hospital. Kazuto's body was taken to the Ocean Turtle where he was connected to the Soul Translator to treat his damaged neural pathways.

Kirito awoke in a forest in an unknown place, wondering where he was. He heard a strange noise and at the source of the noise, he met a boy called Eugeo, who explained to him the basics of the world and took him to his hometown, Rulid Village. In the town he met other people, and decided to stay there. Kirito unintentionally caused Selka Zuberg to run into a certain cave and get captured, causing Kirito and Eugeo to go after her. They defeated the Goblins, but Eugeo was heavily wounded. Kirito awakened Selka, who was lying in a cart, and Selka, with Kirito's assistance, saves Eugeo. They all returned back to the village. Eugeo finished his current Sacred Task and chose his next: to be a swordsman.

Alicization Running
Several months had passed since Kirito and Eugeo had left Rulid Village and had been working as stable boys for a family of farmers. On the 28th Day of the 8th Month they participated in the Zakkaria Sword Arts Tournament, where he faced Egome Zakkarite, a sixth class noble, who used a stronger sword to have an advantage against Kirito, but the latter used his «Snake Bite» Sword Skill to break Egome's sword and win.

Months later he, along with Eugeo, enrolled in the Norlangarth Sword Master Academy, and became valets for the elite swordsmen. One day, Kirito was training with his mentor, Sortiliena Serlut, and after the practice, he returned to his dorm and spoke to Eugeo, who reminded him that the next day, after a complete year, he would receive the sword that was carved from the branch of the Gigas Cedar.

When he returns to the Academy with his new sword, he practiced his Sword Skills to show them to Sortiliena later, but when he attempted to perform a five-hit Sword Skill in the forest to challenge the limit of his new sword in secret, he lost control and stained the shirt of Volo Levantein, the head elite swordsman who was watching him, with mud. As punishment, he had to spar with Volo, who tried to win in one hit as always, but Kirito stopped him with the four hits of «Vertical Square». A supervisor intervened and declared a tie, thus ending the duel.

Alicization Turning
Kirito had become an elite-swordsman in the academy, and thus, he now had a valet. One and a half months in the new school year, on the 17th of the 5th Month, he entered his and Eugeo's room from the window with a bag of honey pies, took a pair for Eugeo and himself, and gave the rest to their respective valets, Tiese Shtolienen and Ronye Arabel. Eugeo reminded him that they have a test on Sacred Arts that he was not good at, so he stayed in his room studying while Eugeo practiced.

Days later, he went to a picnic with Eugeo and their valets, where the latter revealed to Kirito and Eugeo about Humbert Zizek's mistreatment of Frenica Szeski, his valet. Since Eugeo was flustered, Kirito accompanied him to Raios Antinous and Humbert's room to discuss the matter with them; the nobles played dumb and the matter was left as such.

Days later, Kirito was maintaining his sword with Eugeo, and both were waiting for their valets to arrive. They became worried when it turned out that the valets were running late and Kirito decided to look for them, exiting through the window. When he returned to his room, Frenica informed him that Ronye, Tiese and Eugeo were in Raios and Humbert's room. He arrived at the scene just in time to stop Raios from killing Eugeo. As they faced each other, he inexplicitly transformed his sword from a one-handed to a two-handed one and used Whirl Current to beat him, and, at the same time, cutting his arms off.

Kirito and Eugeo were arrested for breaking the Taboo Index and were given into Alice's (now an Integrity Knight) custody the following day. They were then taken to the prison under the Central Cathedral by Alice.

They managed to escape from the prison and arrive at the courtyard of the Cathedral, where they faced the Integrity Knight Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-one. After an intense battle, Eugeo recalled that Eldrie was the winner of the Four Empires Unity tournament held the previous month. Noticing that this revelation could highlight some peculiarities in Eldrie's memory, Kirito joined Eugeo in awakening Eldrie's memory, which caused the Knight to enter a state of shock. As more and more of Eldrie's life details were revealed, a purple prism began to protrude out of Eldrie's forehead. However, at this point, another Integrity Knight attacked the youngsters by firing arrows at them with a bow from atop a flying dragon. Kirito and Eugeo then began to retreat into the Cathedral's garden, while getting directions from Charlotte pulling Kirito's hair in a certain direction at every crossroad. Once they arrived at what seemed to be a dead end, they were called by a young looking girl to escape through a door which Kirito had not noticed before. Thus they entered the Great Library Room, where the girl introduced herself as Cardinal.

In the library he was separated from Eugeo by Cardinal for her to tell him her story and what had happened in Underworld before requesting his help to overthrow Quinella.

Alicization Rising
After Cardinal finished her story, he said that he wanted to save her and the people of Underworld. After reuniting with Eugeo, Cardinal helped the two swordsmen create their own Armament Full Control Arts, before the two headed out into the Central Cathedral again.

Once they were back in the Central Cathedral, they made their way to the Equipment Vault where the Blue Rose Sword and Kirito's black sword were being kept. Upon finding their swords, they were then found by Deusolbert, whom they then fought against and defeated.

After Deusolbert was defeated, he asked them to kill him, as he had failed his task, and therefore he would be punished accordingly. However, they rejected his request, until Eugeo heard the knight's name, and remembered that he was the one that took Alice away. Eugeo then wanted to harm him, however he was then stopped by Kirito.

They then continued on their way up to the top of the Cathedral. On the way to the 29th floor, they met Fizel and Linel, who claimed to be "Sister Apprentices" which was soon proven to be false, as the girls paralysed Kirito and Eugeo with poisoned daggers, while revealing that they were in fact Integrity Knights. The girls then made their way up to the 50th floor, dragging the paralysed duo with them so that they could be executed in front of the other Integrity Knights.

Once they reached the 50th floor, it was revealed that Kirito had determined that the girls were lying before they paralysed Eugeo and himself and noticed that they were carrying blades made from «poison steel from Ruberyl», so while Eugeo was chatting with them, he had chanted an antidote Sacred Art to counter the effects of the poison. He paralysed both Fizel and Linel, and then requested to battle with Fanatio Synthesis Two in an individual duel. However, Fanatio declined the offer, thus Kirito was forced to fight four other Integrity Knights while Fanatio recited her «Armament Full Control Art».

Kirito defeated the four Integrity Knights, and leaped at Fanatio with «Sonic Leap»; however, as he reached the peak of his jump, she finished her «Armament Full Control Art» which upset the trajectory of Kirito's Secret Move as it hit him with a powerful ray of light. Kirito continued to defend against Fanatio, and after getting an upper hand, he found out that Fanatio was a woman. Eugeo took a hand in the fight, and used his Blue Rose Sword's «Armament Full Control Art» to freeze Fanatio. Even though Fanatio was frozen for a few moments, she broke through the ice with her Heaven Piercing Sword. She activated her «Armament Full Control Art» once again, which Kirito countered with his own «Armament Full Control Art».

Due to the fight, Fanatio was mortally wounded, so Kirito decided to use the dagger, which Cardinal had given to him to use on Administrator, on Fanatio to save her life. After Cardinal took Fanatio to save her, Kirito and Eugeo made their past the door that the knights were guarding, where, instead of stairs, they found the Cathedral's equivalent of an elevator and met a young girl who was known by the name "Elevating Operator". She took Kirito and Eugeo to the 80th floor where they met Alice, sitting in the «Cloudtop Garden» waiting for them.

Alice spoke to the two boys, telling them that she had thought Eldrie would be sufficient to cope with the two prisoners in the off chance that they escaped; however, they had surprised her by defeating him, as well as Deusolbert and Fanatio, who possessed Divine Objects. Alice placed her hand on the tree, stating that she would have to fight them, and her Fragrant Olive Sword appeared in her hand, revealing that the tree was her sword in its original form. As Kirito began to attack, the Fragrant Olive Sword split into several petals, capable of killing with ease. Kirito suggested a fair fight, and Alice agreed. Kirito attacked in hopes of surpassing the knight with chain attacks but failed. Due to the Fragrant Olive Sword's high level of Priority, Kirito could only defend himself until Eugeo intervened and froze Alice. Alice broke herself free but, before she could reassemble her sword, Kirito unleashed his Armament Full Control against her sword to keep Alice occupied while Eugeo used Cardinal's dagger. However, the clash of between the two Armament Full Control Arts resulted in a torrent that struck the supposedly indestructible wall and created a hole, which sucked Kirito and Alice out of the Central Cathedral.

Relationships

 * See Kirigaya Kazuto/Relationships

One-Handed Sword

 * Horizontal
 * Horizontal Arc
 * Horizontal Square
 * Rage Spike
 * Sharp Nail
 * Slant
 * Spinning Shield
 * Sonic Leap
 * Vertical
 * Vertical Arc
 * Vertical Square
 * Vorpal Strike

Martial Arts

 * Senda
 * Gengetsu
 * Embracer
 * Meteor Fall
 * Meteor Break
 * Escape

Dual Blades

 * Double Circular
 * Starburst Stream
 * The Eclipse
 * Cross Block

Outside System Skills

 * Arms Blast - The act of destroying a weapon by attacking one of its weakpoints with a powerful blow.
 * Hypersense - The act of sensing the "killing intent" of another player.
 * Mislead - The act of tricking a monster's learning function to burden them.

One-Handed Sword

 * Deadly Sins
 * Horizontal Square
 * Howling Octave
 * Lightning Fall
 * Savage Fulcrum
 * Vertical Square
 * Vorpal Strike

Outside System Skills

 * Spell Blast - The act of intercepting a spell using a Sword Skill.
 * Skill Connect - The act of chaining multiple one-handed weapon Sword Skills to avoid the post-motion delay imposed by the use of Sword Skills.
 * Hypersense - The act of sensing the "killing intent" of another player.

Outside System Skills

 * Bullet Deflect - Using a photon sword to block bullets.
 * Distinguish - Eliminating background noise by concentrating on an unnatural or certain sound to detect another player's movement.
 * Hypersense - Being able to sense the "killing intent" of another player.
 * Sword Skill Imitation - Imitating the use of Sword Skills from Sword Art Online and ALfheim Online without the system assistance.

Aincrad style

 * Horizontal
 * Horizontal Square
 * Rage Spike
 * Slant
 * Sharp Nail
 * Snake Bite
 * Sonic Leap
 * Spinning Shield
 * Vertical Arc
 * Vertical Square
 * Vorpal Strike
 * Nova Ascension
 * Majority of other Sword Skills from Sword Art Online.

Serlut Style

 * Whirling Current (Cyclone)

Dual Blades

 * Starburst Stream

Notable Achievements

 * Cleared the death game, «Sword Art Online»
 * Reached the top of the World Tree, «ALfheim Online»
 * 2nd Place in «ALfheim Online» Cross Territory Race
 * 2nd Place in «ALfheim Online» Swordsman Tournament (without Dual wielding)
 * Co-winner of the Third «Bullet of Bullets» (alongside Sinon), «Gun Gale Online»
 * Owner of the legendary sword «Excalibur» in «ALfheim Online»

Gallery

 * See Kirigaya Kazuto/Image Gallery

Trivia

 * The name Kirito is a portmanteau of his real name, Kirigaya Kazuto ("Kiri" from Kirigaya and "to" from Kazuto).
 * Kazuto currently lives at Kawagoe City in the Saitama prefecture with his family, though his uncle is frequently away from home.
 * Kazuto has notable skill with computers, managing to build a computer from parts during elementary school, finding his erased records in the national registry at the age of ten, as well as managing to stop the SAO server from deleting Yui by converting her program into an object and storing her into his NerveGear as environmental data.
 * Kazuto rides a bike which has also had a multitude of passengers including Asuna, Suguha, Shino and Alice.
 * Kirito is a two-time first place winner for the Top 10 Male Characters in the Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! awards (for 2012 and 2013). He placed third in 2011 and 2014.
 * Kirito/Kazuto usually refers to himself using the personal pronoun ore (俺).
 * Kirito likes calculating random things, like the volume of the cake that he is going to eat.
 * Kirito has a tendency of using a window instead of a door to exit the room more quickly, usually when he senses danger or in awkward situations, though sometimes just for convenience.
 * Kirito's favorite skill is fishing. He even continues raising his fishing skill in ALO.
 * Kirito has attempted to climb Aincrad via its outer wall. However, his ascent was halted by a system barrier, nearly causing him to fall to his death.
 * Kirito uses a self-made PC with a 24 GHz octa-core CPU.
 * If Kirito were to be an animal, he would be an orange wolf.
 * Kazuto's favourite dish is brown stew chicken with mushrooms due to its similarity to Ragout Rabbit Stew from SAO. Due to Asuna's influence, his other favourite dishes include teriyaki and mayonnaise hamburgers, shio ramen, and honey pies.
 * Kirito used to dislike spring onions until Asuna cooked some for him.
 * Kirito believes he would have pursued Asuna as a love interest sooner if she had not been so cute. He now regrets this, as he only had good food in SAO when he was with Asuna.
 * Kirito has attempted wielding three swords at once but had to abandon his idea when he realised that it felt like his teeth would fall out.
 * Kazuto/Kirito likes to poke on the cheeks of sleeping girls. He has already done that with Asuna, Yui and Suguha.
 * Kirito said that it seemed that everyone in SAO, including Asuna, viewed him as being older than he really was and, since he had never denied it, he had trouble admitting it to her at some point in the story.
 * Kirito suspected Asuna to be older than him but thought she probably viewed him older than he really was.
 * Kazuto got an extremely average IQ score in the test he took during middle school.
 * Ever since the second year in SAO, Kirito has been known to sleep a lot. His sleep also seems to be an "AOE" skill, as people looking at him sleeping, with Pina and Yui sleeping on him, get sleepy themselves. He himself states that sleeping when one can is the 2nd most essential point of the Aincrad-style.
 * Kirito was an ideal person whom Kawahara wanted to become. Kawahara commented that he always hesitates to act, pointing out that it took him seven years to finally apply for the Dengeki Award.
 * Kirito's preference for black clothing began with the first rare item he obtained from a boss drop: the black coat called the «Coat of Midnight». After that, he began to like colour black and, by the end of the game, all of his clothes were mainly black.
 * According to Yui, Kirito's in-game yawns last about eight seconds on average.
 * When doing Kirito's GGO character design, abec first drew him with breasts to not think of him as being male and then erased the breasts when the designs were done.
 * Kazuto's GGO avatar is informally referred to as «Kiriko» . The series' author acknowledged this as a commonly used name.
 * In Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, a non-canon game adaptation set in Gun Gale Online, Kirito's secondary avatar, with his canon Gun Gale Online appearance, was registered in the game as «Kiriko» by Kikuoka Seijirou, when he created the avatar for Kirito to use for the Bullet of Bullets.
 * In an official character popularity poll hosted by Dengeki Bunko for the cover of abec Art Works, Kazuto's SAO avatar ranked fourth, GGO avatar ranked nineteenth, his Alicization avatar ranked twenty-eighth, while his real life persona ranked twenty-second.
 * In the web version, Kazuto's avatar in SAO's beta was twenty centimetres higher than his actual height and with long, mint color hair.

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