Disclaimer: I don't own Sword Art Online or any of its characters. They are all owned by A-1 Pictures, Aniplex USA, and Reki Kawahara.

A/N: Thanks to DutchHorizon for being a beta for this chapter.

"Come on man! You have to tell me where you are getting all of these ovules!"

No.

"Yeah! You shouldn't be keeping it a secret!"

Watch me.

Kirito had gotten used to the madness by now. It had always been like this. Right from the beginning.

Just… chaos. So many people would be shouting at him, trying to get him to give them a hint of some kind, but he had learned to tune it all out after the first ten minutes or so on that first day his shop was open.

He had a strategy.

Say nothing at all. He was not confident in his ability to lie, or to act, so he wouldn't. He'd just be a wall.

His helper sitting next to him, laughed.

Timely Advice was his name. And in Kirito's opinion, that was really all anyone needed to know about the guy to understand exactly the type of person that he was. One of those players that tried to turn their username into something either funny, or ironic. It was probably some sort of inside joke that he didn't understand.

"My friend here doesn't have to tell you anything," Timely Advice replied.

Kirito grinned under his hood.

He had to admit... the guy helping him with these trades was awesome.

"You shut up Timely! Of course you would say that, you're making a crapload of money off this!"

"You got that right."

He just didn't seem to care about anything. Everything just seemed to just bounce right off him. It was amazing to see. Kirito honestly envied his helper's ability to just say whatever was on his mind without a care about what anybody else thought about it.

"And besides, even if my buddy here did reveal how he was getting all of these ovules, it wouldn't even matter. "

"What are you talking about now?"

"You can only trade them in for a sword, once. If you do the math, there are only about 8,000 players left in the game. Which means, once 8,000 ovules have been sold, nobody else will need any more, and they will stop selling. By the time you start trying to replicate what my friend here is doing, the opportunity will have already passed you by."

That wasn't technically true, Kirito thought to himself. Ovules had other uses, aside from trading them for that sword. His Mixing grind came to mind… But once the hype around the Anneal Blade died down when everyone that wanted one got their hands on it, it would make sense that the demand for them would drastically decrease, and the price would have to be lowered way down.

But Kirito had another plan that he wanted to execute soon that would sort of address that.

In a few hours, when noon hit, a lot of players would leave the markets to go eat lunch in one of the restaurants in the area, which meant that most of the chaos around his shop would die down for a bit.

It'd pick up again an hour or so later, but Kirito was waiting for that time.

He needed to ask his helper a question, and Kirito didn't want to break his facade of complete silence when there were people around to do it yet.

And besides… he had something else to worry about anyway.

He had noticed Argo's plant in the distance. Her spy.

Every now and then, the player would subtly glance his way. Casually eavesdropping on the conversation. Hoping for some hint to be revealed, so he could report it back to Argo.

Kirito had anticipated that this would happen in advance however, which was part of the reason why he vowed to never speak.

Argo was just ruthless when it came to information. She could make these wide, sweeping conclusions from just the tiniest hints.

Kirito knew all about it. He had seen just how shrewd she could be back in the beta.

Anything he ever said would be used against him somehow, so he couldn't let her spy hear anything out of him.

He had taken extensive precautions to counter anything she might try.

It was obvious that she would be intrigued about his merchant persona. Somebody knew about a source of super valuable ovules and she didn't. She'd have picked up on that as soon as the rumours had started flying and she'd definitely want in on it.

Kirito had predicted exactly the situation he was in at the moment, and had prepared for it.

Of course a spy would be sent to observe him. In fact, there had probably even been one watching him the previous day. Perhaps even the day before that. Though she would have had to have moved pretty quickly if that were the case. This was only his third day here, after all.

He hadn't managed to find any spies yesterday, or the day before, even though he had tried to look for them, but it was within reason for Argo to mobilize her network of spies within just a few hours of his first appearance to the playerbase.

But he had planned for it. He was ready to face whatever she had in store for him.

His identity protections were always up, Rigid Cloak and Mask were active, and his cursor was hidden, even though that wasn't technically necessary when he was indoors. He just always had the ability active.

So he was confident that nobody would be able to figure out who he was. Not without taking drastic measures, anyways.

Such measures would pretty much ruin Argo's reputation, however, should she try to implement them.

Argo was an info dealer. Which meant that the majority of her clients were in some sense, like Kirito. They were incredibly secretive, and some refused to even give her their names.

Some of her best sources of info were completely anonymous. That was just how spy networks tended to work in the game. Since Argo had a reputation of being willing to sell anything, it was just better for everyone involved if names were kept out of it to ensure anonymity.

That was the condition for a lot of spies to even consider working for someone like her.

Not all spies were like that, the one currently observing him was an example, but many were.

So, there was this set of unwritten rules that had developed on its own, as a result of this that almost everyone knew all about.

A set of rules of engagement for dealing with these sorts of secretive players. A list of things that you do not do, even though you technically could.

If you are a merchant, or a spy, or are providing any sort of service at all, and you do not reveal your name, everyone has to respect those wishes.

It is your right as a player to hide your identity if you wish to.

It was absolutely possible for someone to stand right in front of Kirito, activate an overpowered search ability, and try to abruptly shatter all of his identity protections in an instant, while he was stuck sitting inside the cramped cafe.

He had countermeasures for even that ready, but they were probably unnecessary.

It was a terrible, terrible idea to do that to someone in front of a bunch of witnesses, if you wanted to keep any sort of honest reputation afterwards.

Doing this was so serious an offence, that there was a list of names of players that had done this, that almost nobody would trade, or speak with. Known untrustworthy people that had tried to identify someone who did not want to be identified.

Anonymity was such a critical component of the game, that you just couldn't afford to deal only with players who were public.

Pretty much all of the top tier items and weapons were sold by anonymous players to ensure that they didn't get targeted out in the wild.

If you tried to identify one of these people, then why would any other anonymous player ever try to deal with you?

Anonymous players basically gave the rest of the playerbase an ultimatum. Deal with us, trade with us, provide us services on our terms, or don't. But if you don't, we will not come to you for anything. And you will not come to us. It was as simple as that.

The only aspect of a player that everyone seemed to agree was actually necessary to know, anonymous or not, was the colour of your cursor.

People in general just didn't want to get caught dealing with criminals. There was too much baggage there, especially now that the game had become a matter of life and death.

Hiding a name was fine. But the cursor was another matter. It didn't lie about the type of person you were.

Kirito could imagine that this trend was far more intense now, then it had been in the beta.

There was a filter in place now. When SAO had been in beta, some people just felt like playing as orange players for entertainment purposes. But now, these people wouldn't even dream of doing that because it would ruin their life. So any player that was orange, would be seen as way worse than they had been back then.

They were real this time. Orange players were real criminals, not pretenders or roleplayers. And you could be totally sure that they had done something that deserved punishment.

Who would ever want to be orange in a game like this?

This all meant that if you were orange, you couldn't actually hide in most circumstances when you tried dealing with others. If you hid your name, everyone would be looking for your cursor before trading, or dealing with you. It was just the natural thing that tended to happen.

Which was why Kirito needed to be indoors and all that.

He wasn't hiding, he was just in a place where everyone's cursor was hidden by the game.

Plausible deniability.

It actually seemed like a bit of an oversight, now that he thought about it. Why was the market indoors? Had it just been the case that nobody had anticipated that orange players could take advantage of that? Or was it just expected that there would be no orange players in the game yet?

With everyone's need to know the cursor colour of the person they were dealing with, Kirito would have figured that somebody would have pointed this oversight out, and moved the market somewhere else.

But then again, there hadn't been a lot orange players yet. He had yet to see another one at all, even. It was easily possible that nobody knew yet about all of the subtle cursor mechanics in the game, and that this simply hadn't been thought of.

There were still a lot of unknowns about the game, after all. A lot of them that even he didn't know himself.

For example, what if Kirito deactivated his Hidden Cursor ability right now? While he was sitting indoors in his shop?

Would the game still hide it since he was in a building like it would for a green player?

Or was their some sort of an exception for orange players? Where the game decided that it would only hide a green player's cursor when they travelled into a building?

This, not even Kirito knew the answer to. He'd like to know, but he certainly couldn't afford to risk testing it out yet with so many people around.

Perhaps this was even some sort of trap.

...

Kirito narrowed his eyes.

That... would actually be incredibly clever if it was the case.

Deliberately put the market indoors to make orange players think exactly like Kirito had.

'I can get away with trading with players even though I'm orange specifically because I'll be indoors. So the game will hide my cursor!'

Then, thinking they were being pretty sneaky, they would go inside, and the game wouldn't hide them at all due to the cursor exception. Then everyone would see them. There would probably even be a coordinated effort by everyone in the area to then capture the person.

But Kirito had Hidden Cursor active. Which meant that if this was some sort of trap to lure out orange players, he could still slip through it unnoticed.

Kirito leaned back in his chair.

It was an unnerving thought if this was the case.

He had no idea if his cursor was being hidden by that indoors mechanic, or by his Hidden Cursor ability, and he couldn't find out unless he turned that ability off. Which was a terrible, terrible idea considering how precarious his current position was, just to test out a theory.

Someone could absolutely take advantage of that to turn this whole cafe into a potential death trap for orange players.

He could easily see himself falling for this. In fact, he probably would have.

But of course, it all assumed that there was that orange cursor exception while indoors, and it assumed that whoever had decided to place the market there in the first place knew about this subtle detail, and had planned to use it in this way.

Kirito really needed to step up his game, he realized.

He should have anticipated this potential trap long before ever setting foot inside this building.

He had not thought to specifically hide his cursor to avoid this possible cursor exception, and had instead kept it up as a habit.

The habit may have saved his life, sure. But he should have seen this.

He really needed to be more careful.

…

But in any case, cursor aside, he had taken some preparations in the case that Argo tried to do anything drastic to find out stuff about him, even if he was almost sure that she wouldn't go that far.

His 'shop' was a table in the corner of the room.

He had strategically selected this table, and had even selected the seating arrangement of both himself and his helper without making it obvious that he was doing so.

He had simply made sure to sit down first, forcing his helper into the only remaining seat on their side of the table.

Kirito was in the corner seat. Meaning, his back was about a foot away from one wall of the cafe, and his right shoulder was about a foot away from another wall.

He was tucked away right in the corner of the room.

He was facing along the length of one wall, the one just next to him, while his helper sat just beside him on his left.

The entrance to the cafe was on the far wall a dozen or so meters to his left.

This meant that his helper blocked any line of sight between him and anyone standing in the doorway or on the left side of the room in general.

Additionally, since the opening of his hood faced along the length of the wall next to him, if anyone tried to shatter all of his identity protections using Search despite the unbelievable blow to their reputation that that would entail with so many witnesses around, they could not effectively do so without standing directly in front him.

They could not snipe him from across the room, in other words.

If his Mask ability somehow went down, then the side of his hood would still ensure his face would not be seen unless someone was standing right in front of him.

But he could simply spin around and face the corner of the cafe right behind him in this case, ensuring that his face was still hidden.

And if they were in front of him and this happened, and he had no time to whirl around to prevent his face from being seen, he could literally slam his face into the table in an instant as a last resort, hiding his face from view, and buying himself enough time to teleport out with the teleport crystal that he had hotkeyed.

He had gotten used to dealing with the drastically reduced pain sensing that occurred within the game, which meant that typically stupid things to do like punching brick walls or slamming your face into a wooden table didn't hurt nearly as much as they should.

He'd end up back in the Town of Beginnings if he had to resort to this, the guard timer would start up again, and people would probably see him with a missing cursor and might try to track him down, but Kirito doubted that anyone could catch him on such short notice if he took off immediately upon arrival.

His strategic positioning of his shop however, minimized the odds of these sorts of outcomes happening as much as possible.

But it was nice to know that even in the worst case scenario, there was still something that he could do. That he still had options.

He took extreme care to ensure that the opening of his hood did not deviate from its position facing straight ahead along the length of the wall.

He probably even looked like a hooded mannequin, or a statue even, due to this complete lack of movement.

Since he could see through his own cloak from the inside with a passive ability, it was not necessary to physically turn around in an obvious way if he wanted to look around the room.

His cloak was baggy, and his Rigid Cloak ability ensured that any awkward shifting around he was doing inside, was not noticeable to anyone near him.

So he could easily be staring right at the doorway to the cafe, way off on the left side of the room without anyone being able to tell, since it'd still look like he was still staring straight ahead.

It would always look that way no matter where he was actually looking, or where his head was actually turned.

This was also how he had been able to notice his observer, he suspected.

Argo's spy had probably looked at the opening of Kirito's hood and figured that it was not possible to be seen from the angle of it. Not anticipating Kirito's ability to freely move his head within the cloak without anyone noticing, and his ability to see through the fabric.

And as a result, all of the signs that he had learned about in the beta that were indicative of a spy, were very evident to him in this person watching him.

He'd even go so far as to call the spy observing him a bit of an amateur.

Kirito tuned back into the conversation next to him.

"So are you here to buy any ovules?" Timely asked the impatient player in front of them.

"How much do you want?"

"It says right on the sign."

"Not that! How much do you want for the information on where you are getting all of these ovules?"

"More than you have."

"Give me a number."

"A billion Cor."

"What?!"

Kirito blinked inside his hood.

If you got all remaining 8,000 players in the game to pool together all of their money, you still probably wouldn't get to a billion. Not this soon in the game.

...

On second thought…

Kirito considered his own cash stack for a moment.

He had become a millionaire two days ago. He made over 6 million just yesterday alone. And another few million today.

If there were a decent amount of other people like him, you might actually make it. It'd be close…

But it really depended on how many whales existed in the game.

Whales of course, referred to the tiny percentage of players who accumulated vast amounts of wealth, only to never do anything with it. The players who just accumulated more and more, and only spent any money as a means to further increase their wealth through flipping, merchanting, or investing.

There were probably a few absolutely stupidly rich whales out there somewhere that he just didn't know about yet.

A billion cor may be possible.

"Get serious!"

"I'm deadly serious."

"You see this?" Timely Advice pointed at his face. "This is my serious face."

"Nobody has that much!"

"Well I guess that's unfortunate then. Looks like you won't be buying that information."

Kirito grinned again.

He had been doing that a lot recently.

Timely had some great one liners, and could handle the chaos around him just fine. Kirito didn't need to say anything with a helper like this on his side. It was all under control.

With that thought, he let his mind wander off again.

…

Hang on a minute…

This couldn't be a trap for orange players.

Or if it was, it wasn't thought out properly.

If this market's location was meant to lure out orange players due to its location indoors, then it would only work on players who did not possess the Hide skill.

Orange players without that skill wouldn't be able to make it there at all, though.

It was actually pretty tricky getting in and out of the cafe he was in, given his current situation. It took a good deal more effort than most people would probably expect.

The cafe was crowded when he got there. And today, a lot of people had been waiting for specifically him to arrive since he had told a bunch of people yesterday about it.

The last time he ever intended to publicly speak.

He had had to wait in an alley under his full camouflage for an opening in the crowd to sneak through the doorway without anyone noticing.

It had actually been a pretty unnerving experience doing so as well.

Maintaining full invisibility while you are nearly shoulder to shoulder with other players in a crowd was difficult, but not due to the amount of people in the area. It was actually pretty surprising how few people looked your way when you were in the middle of a crowd. There were so few in fact, that it was easily possible to remain completely invisible. So even though there were so many people around him at the time, his camouflage had stayed up.

The part that was actually challenging was not bumping into anyone. As that would reveal himself instantly.

But he had waited for the proper moment, he had planned ahead, and he had slipped inside easily enough.

Leaving however, was much more challenging.

How do you get out of the building discretely when you are a well known merchant with very valuable and exclusive information that some players would kill to have?

How do you do that successfully while keeping the fact that you are hiding your cursor with an ability, secret?

It was obvious that all kinds of people had every intention of following him as soon as he would try to leave the building.

And he couldn't just activate his camouflage in front of all of those people. It would give away just how much he had levelled up the ability, and he wanted to keep everything he could do, as much of a secret as possible.

So Kirito had had to come up with a sleight of hand magic trick to avoid suspicion.

It was actually pretty clever, if he did say so himself…

It was such a simple solution.

He'd leave via teleportation. But he wanted to ensure that nobody ever found out about his Ring of Acid. So he made it look like he was using a teleport crystal, even though he wasn't.

So he would activate his ring very subtly a few minutes in advance of when he intended to leave, and wait for the teleport activation timer to run out. Then he would pull out his teleport crystal in the final few seconds before the actual teleportation with his ring occurred, and reveal it to the room in such a way that anyone in front of him could easily see it.

They would see him pull out the crystal and think: 'looks like he's teleporting back to the starting city with that crystal.'

Everyone knew that teleport crystals existed in the game. There was just no easy way to get them yet. So they were items held almost exclusively by the rich, since there were so few of them in the game. But you could occasionally find one being sold in the market he was in, if you spent some time looking for one.

So the people observing him pull out this teleport crystal wouldn't think much of it. They'd think that he was just another rich player leaving the building in such a way as to not be followed. It was a common practice, actually.

Then the thing that would actually teleport him out of the building, his ring, would finish activating just as he lowered his teleport crystal out of view from all of the spectators once again.

That was the most important part of the trick, subtle as it was.

Since he wasn't actually using the crystal to leave, it wouldn't actually shatter in his hand as it activated. So it had to be out of view in the final moments before the teleportation animation began, to prevent anyone from noticing this subtle detail.

If he vanished with an intact teleportation crystal in his hand, in full view of the spectators, an astute observer could potentially notice that something strange was going on.

But the stars had basically aligned for him in this instance. All of the little details that might have conceivably given this trick away, ended up working for him instead.

The animation from his Ring of Acid as it teleported him to the boss Nepenthe was identical to the animation of using a teleport crystal. The typical blue flash. So he didn't have to worry about any unique green flash or something else that would have shown to everyone in the area that he had definitely not used a crystal to create that effect, and was instead using a different teleportation item.

He had actually tested this out a few days back, by teleporting with that ring while staring down at a stream near his cave. Before disappearing, the water had acted as a good enough mirror for him to see what the animation looked like.

And then there was the default teleport. The final detail that made all of this possible.

Normally, when using a crystal, you had to verbally announce where you were teleporting to. But Kirito, naturally, didn't want to talk out loud. It would ruin his facade and who knows? Argo may recognize his voice or something…

It had already been a risk speaking at the end of the previous day, and at the end of his first day to tell everyone he was coming back.

But if you didn't do this… if you didn't verbally announce your destination upon teleporting, then the crystal would still teleport you, it would just select the default teleport location instead, which was always the starting city on the first floor.

So when he used his crystal without speaking, it would be understood by his spectators that he was teleporting to the Town of Beginnings, even if he didn't specifically say so, because that was the default, and it was also the only teleport location currently unlocked. You could only teleport to a city with a teleport gate inside it after all. And only one such city existed on each floor of Aincrad, making the Town of Beginnings the only target currently available for those crystals.

Then, after teleporting with his ring, he could simply pretend that he had given the slip to all of the players waiting in the Town of Beginnings for this exact moment. The ones that were undoubtedly waiting for him to arrive there so that they could try to tail him to see where he went.

He had no doubt that those players existed.

But it was a crowded city. Surely none of them would notice that he never actually arrived. They would probably think that he was just really good at blending in with crowds, rather than assume that something else had happened.

But the main point to all of this, and the main reason why it all meant that this couldn't be a trap for orange players, was that this all took a lot of effort. If Kirito did not have the Hide skill maxed out, he couldn't get in and out of the building freely.

He was almost certain that it was impossible for an orange player to set up a shop in the building at all, unless they had the specific items and skills that Kirito had on him at the moment.

His ring was needed to get him out of the building without being followed. His teleport crystal was needed to cover up the fact that he had a ring at all. His Cursor hiding ability hid him from any possible orange cursor exception mechanic that may or may not exist in the game's code for hiding cursors when indoors, and he needed Hide maxed out to have a strong enough camouflage to be totally invisible even when in the middle of a crowd of people.

If an orange player didn't have even one of those things, none of it would work. Or it would at least be much more difficult to manage it.

So it couldn't be a trap to lure out orange players, because an orange player couldn't even get into the building unless they were immune to the trap entirely.

"Hey!"

Kirito tuned back into the conversation when a new voice entered it.

An annoyed customer from further back in the line finally shouted at the player trying to buy information from him and his current business partner.

It would seem that some of the other customers were getting annoyed at the hold up in the line.

"What do you want?" The annoying customer said, turning to face the protester.

"Buy an ovule or get the hell out of the line! People are waiting!"

"Yeah!" Another voice agreed. "Hurry the hell up!"

"Shut up!" The annoying man replied. "This doesn't concern any of you!"

"Oh it doesn't does it?" A giant of a man said, as he walked out from the crowd of waiting players.

He was huge, and Kirito honestly wondered what someone like him was doing playing a game like Sword Art Online. He had to be close to 7 feet tall, and close to 250 pounds.

The giant closed the distance and walked right up to the guy holding up the line. "Last I checked some pipsqueak loudmouth was preventing me from getting my sword."

The annoying player audibly gulped, but managed to keep a straight face.

"Ooooooooooooh, it's on now!" A player further back called out, seeing the scene play out.

"Kick his ass, big dude!"

Kirito raised a single eyebrow in confusion after seeing all of this. Was there seriously about to be a fight over this? That was new.

He wasn't really worried about it though. Nobody could hurt each other in a safe zone. But fighting was still discouraged anyway due to the anti-harassment code that allowed instigators to be sent to the in-game jail.

The player holding up the line took a good look at the intimidating player before him and quickly seemed to grasp the situation he was in.

He would have thought that the crowd would be on his side. On the side of trying to figure out how a single merchant had gotten their hands on so many of these priceless ovules. But apparently, many of these players just wanted their sword so that they could be on their way and didn't really care all that much about such details.

After reading the crowd, he huffed in annoyance, and glared at Timely, the one doing all the talking for the nameless merchant.

"I will get that info," were his last words, as he stormed out of the room.

Kirito watched him leave. It hadn't been the first player to say that to him, and it probably wouldn't be the last either.

He'd just make sure to be extra careful when leaving the cafe, later.

A cheer ran through the crowd of players watching all of this play out, and the line started moving again.

"Hey, big guy!" The player who was now supposed to be at the front of line spoke up.

"Hm?" the giant replied.

"You're up next," he said with a gesture, giving up his spot in line.

"You serious?"

"Yeah! That was awesome dude! It's the least I can do."

"Thanks."

As a courtesy, the guy in the front of line, let the huge player that had sorted out the situation cut in front of him.

And then it was back to business as usual.

Noon eventually hit, and as expected, the crowd thinned out.

Ironically, the cafe they were in was barely used at all for actually eating.

Kirito could only imagine what the NPCs that owned the place had to be thinking.

All of these players just waltz into their cafe one day and set up a market inside, and then nobody buys any food from them. Instead, most of these players choose to go to other restaurants in the area. In fact, many of the players that used this place as a market probably didn't even know that there was a cafe in the place at all.

These players had basically just taken over the building without permission, and had to be killing the business of the actual cafe owners in the process.

That's what would have been happening if this were real life anyway.

But the fact that they hadn't all been collectively kicked out by the NPC shopkeeper showed that things worked differently in this world.

The NPCs probably weren't programmed to care about such things.

Kirito still thought that the idea was pretty funny though. He'd have been outraged if this were his cafe, and he were presented with this situation.

But anyways…

The time had finally arrived for him to initiate the next phase of his plan.

His helper had been correct about the fact that his current shop would eventually die out after the Anneal Blade rush ended, and it was time to address that issue.

So Kirito waited in silence for a few minutes. Hoping for a moment where he could start a conversation with Timely, without drawing the attention of anyone else.

…

Eventually, his moment arrived.

"Thanks for all the help," Kirito said, breaking his silence.

Timely Advice understood for the most part, why Kirito hadn't been speaking and was pretty unphased by it. Apparently, a lot of anonymous players were exactly the same in that aspect, so it wasn't seen as unusual for someone in his position.

"Hm? Don't worry about it. The pay's been great."

The two of them were still sitting next to each other in the corner of the cafe. Kirito was leaning back in his chair while his helper Timely, had his feet propped up on the table.

One of the small aspects of the fact that they were in a virtual world that he was grateful for, was the lack of common annoyances like cramps, and small pains due to sitting down on hard surfaces, or in weird positions. The soreness that you would typically feel in the real world after sitting on a hard seat for half a day wasn't present at all.

As a result, neither of them felt any need to stand up or stretch or their legs.

"I have another offer for you later if you're interested," Kirito stated.

"I think you already know what my answer to that will be."

"Yeah, I think I can imagine."

Timely made it pretty clear that he only really cared about money.

"But anyways," Kirito continued, "Before that, do you happen to know of any decent merchants that would be willing to deal with a player like me?"

"Oh man. There's a ton of them," his helper replied. "I probably couldn't name one for you off the top of my head, but I've got a list of them, actually."

That was certainly convenient.

"A list?" Kirito asked.

"Yeah, hang on a sec."

Kirito watched as his helper opened up his menu, and started going through his inventory. A moment or two later, an object materialized in his helper's hand.

"Yeah, so I deal with a lot of them, as I'm sure you can imagine," His helper said. "It's kinda what I do. Since I'm almost always only employed by anon's like yourself, and not all merchants are willing to deal with such players, the ones that are, I see pretty regularly."

He technically worked as a middle man for trades between players. However, it turned out that most people that needed such a service were either people with extremely valuable items in their possession, people who could potentially have hitmen hired to take them from them, or people that just didn't want to be known because they didn't like attention.

In either of those cases, the player would almost always hide their identity.

And as a result, he would regularly have to facilitate transactions between these anonymous players and public merchants whenever the anon wanted to start buying or selling things in bulk. Something that couldn't really be done by trading with single players.

"So naturally," he continued, "I made a list of them."

"Anyway, here it is," he said, handing the list to Kirito. "It's in alphabetical order, so it's not sorted by importance or anything like that. So take your pick. Everyone there will be more than happy to work with you on your terms. Especially with how much of an impact you've been making recently."

Kirito scanned the list, but didn't recognize any names. He hadn't dealt with many merchants in the past, though, so he wasn't really sure who he was even looking for.

After another moment or two, Kirito decided to just pick someone at random. For convenience, he just picked the person that appeared at the top of the list.

Agil.

"So where can I find this Agil? You know him?" Kirito asked.

"Agil? Yeah I know him," his helper replied.

"Big guy," he explained, "Can be pretty scary sometimes. Super friendly though."

"You want to meet him?" he asked. "I can probably set something up."

"In fact, I probably already know what you're thinking," Timely claimed. "It's a good idea. He'll be down for it."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. It's a win-win-win. You free up some time, Agil does what he does best, and I get paid."

"Sounds good to me. He can make contracts?"

"Yeah. Everyone on that list can."

"Alright, that works for me. How soon can you set this up?"

"Does tonight work for you?"

"Tonight? That's pretty fast."

"Yeah, he'll make the time for someone like you if you've got the time to spare."

"That works for me."

"Cool. I'll send him a message right now."

"Alright, thanks."

Kirito had briefly considered trying to find an NPC merchant that would work with an orange player, but figured that this would just be easier. That, and he wasn't sure if such NPC merchants existed.

But since anonymous players seemed to be more common now than they had been in the beta due to everyone having their real faces on display, a player merchant looked like a better option for what he had in mind. They wouldn't look at an anonymous player with suspicion, necessarily.

As long as he was super careful about how the contract he wanted to set up was created, and he never met either this Agil, or his helper in any outdoors setting, and didn't make it obvious that he was doing so, everything should work out.

"Ugh! That stupid jerk! When I get my hands on him, I swear to god!"

What the hell is even going through his head?!

Argo was livid. She had been in a terrible mood all day. And the previous day.

It had actually carried over from two days ago.

Ever since her favourite solo player had muted her.

Her!

Who does he think he is?!

Nobody mutes Argo. It just didn't happen.

She was the one who mutes! Not other people! Her!

It had caught her completely off guard. Never in a million years did she think that Kirito of all people, would dare to try something like that with her. Not without at least talking to her about it first! She didn't even know why he did it!

Well… maybe she had sent him one too many friend requests… But he should have accepted long ago!

When the death game had started after Kayaba's announcement, she had understood why Kirito hadn't accepted her requests immediately. At least, for the first little while.

It had made some sense to her after she had thought about it for a bit, after all of her attempts had failed. Even though it had irritated the crap out of her when she figured out what the reason probably was.

It was ironic, really. She was the one with the moniker of "The Rat,' but Kirito really fit that description himself in his own way.

Well... she actually thought that he was more like a cute little mouse, then a rat.

Because every time he was even remotely threatened, he would just drop everything and go AWOL. Simply vanishing. Sometimes for days at a time.

And then it would take ages for him to finally peek his head out again from whatever corner he had hidden himself in after things had finally calmed down a little.

As a result, she had carefully crafted the skill of slowly easing him out of his hidey hole whenever he had gotten a little too spooked for one reason or another.

When she was finally baiting him out in a situation like that, she couldn't be too pushy or aggressive. She also had to tone down the teasing a little, or else he could run off again.

It was a careful balancing act that she had had to pull off a couple of times in the past.

And she thought it was adorable… most of the time, anyways.

But the whole death game thing had probably caused the same thing to happen.

So for a couple of days, even a week, she could come to terms with the fact that he'd simply be off the radar, god knows where.

Frustrating, sure, but understandable.

But then he was supposed to come out again, and he didn't.

And then another week had passed. And then another.

It was around that third week that she had really started to get worried. Something huge had to have happened for him to have been out of contact with her for so long. She was always the first person he'd speak to every time he came out of hiding.

It just wasn't like him to be gone for that long.

She had even taken to routinely checking the Monument of Life just to make sure that he was still alive.

...And then the jerk had muted her!

Just... out of the blue! She heard nothing from him for weeks, and then all of a sudden she gets the system alert telling her that she can't send any more messages to him!

He had certainly never done that to her before!

And it drove her right up the freaking wall! Didn't he know how worried she had been about him this whole time?

She was going to have words with that jerk when she finally managed to track him down.

And she would track him down. She'd find him and get some answers if it was the last thing she did.

She had sent some of her spies out during that first week and they had been searching ever since. But dammit, he must have found one hell of a deep hole because she hadn't heard so much as a peep from anyone about his whereabouts.

That was one of the most amazing, but also frustrating things about him.

He was without a doubt the closest friend she had made in the beta, but when he tried to Hide, dammit did he hide well.

Way too well for his own good. So well that even she couldn't figure out where he was, most of the time.

Argo let out a frustrated sigh.

"God dammit Ki-bou, couldn't you have just told me what was going on? I could have helped."

It hurt her a good deal more than she liked to admit, that he apparently didn't trust her with whatever had happened. That he had thought that it was best to simply leave her out of it.

And she couldn't help herself whenever her mind turned in that direction. Her thoughts would always lead her down the path towards all of her previous interactions with him.

Had she said something during the beta that had offended him, and he just hadn't said anything about it at the time? Had she hurt him somehow without realizing? Did she make some sort of mistake?

He had never directly said anything, or even hinted to her about anything along those lines. But maybe she had taken her teasing a little bit too far one time without realizing it?

She had no idea.

She really just wanted her friend back, though.

...

Abruptly, she received a message, and she was forced out of her thoughts.

She was laying on her back, spread-eagled and facing the ceiling, in the bed of her newly rented room.

Her sleep schedule had gone out of whack due to pulling a few too many all-nighters, so even though it wasn't even 5pm yet, she was ready for bed.

She had just been laying awake, trying to make herself fall asleep, when the message had alerted her.

It was from one of her contacts.

Opening her menu, she quickly read it over.

She had something like two dozen projects that she was working on all simultaneously.

She had so much on her plate that she had pretty much mentally capped out. As much as she was currently doing, she had a massive backlog of even more projects that she hadn't been able to even start yet. Enough to keep her busy for months, easily.

But currently, she had people looking for her friend, though she hadn't really specified to them that that was who she was looking for. She had really just told them to check out certain locations that she could see Kirito being drawn to without telling them why.

Then she had people simply exploring the floor, trying to make maps of all of the dungeons and hidden ruins.

Then she had a team looking for the boss room.

She had people constantly looking for new information so that she could release her next, updated version of the guidebook.

She was constantly recruiting new people to expand her information network.

Then of course, she had to deal with all of the people that were her actual customers, looking to buy and sell information from her. Which was sort of how she made her living...

Then there were about 20 or so mysterious players that were all worth looking into, either for finding something interesting, whether that was a rare item that hadn't been seen in the beta, or because they had stumbled upon some new ability, or because they were just unbelievably strong for being so early in the game...

This so called 'Hooded Demon' that had allegedly cleared out a Nepenthe horde after a fruit had burst was just the latest one of those…

It was such a stupid moniker. Which ironically, was probably why it ended up sticking…

It had been coined by one of the players who had allegedly witnessed this player in action in that forest. One of the players who would have died had that player not intervened. But the stupid name was clearly an attempt to turn the whole thing into a legend. So not much real information was available, since there were already so many exaggerated rumours out there already.

But if even some of those rumours about this player's strength were true, it would put that person squarely in the rank 1 position in terms of strength of all known players in the game so far… So she had people looking into that, too.

Then there was a merchant that had shown up in the player market in Tolbana that had an apparently endless supply of those ovules, and was currently causing havoc in the economy by introducing so many Anneal Blades into the game. Completely upsetting the power balance between the different types of players.

It was getting to the point that if you weren't using one of those swords, then you were limited in the speed at which you could level up, since there was no corresponding Anneal Blade for polearms, axes, or any of the other weapon types widely available.

That one merchant, as a result, was changing the meta of the game single handedly, and not everyone was happy about it.

She had hired people to look for this source of ovules as a result, since this merchant currently had a monopoly on the supply, but she had so far come up empty. She had even started to consider the possibility of an item duplication glitch existing, so she had prioritized this particular project to find out what was actually going on…

But she also had to consider this being an actual legitimate source of ovules that she just hadn't found yet, so she was pursuing other possibilities as well.

One of which was just a hunch of hers. That Hooded Demon guy that had shown up, if he even existed at all because that was still unconfirmed, had apparently been a master of killing those Nepenthes, which had immediately lead her, and many others, to believe that there might have been some sort of connection between that person and that merchant in Tolbana, so she had people trying to look into that as well…

Maybe they were part of the same guild or something...

But coincidentally enough, the player she had hired to observe this merchant had been the one to just message her.

And he had just told her that he had managed to get exactly nothing out of him. Which naturally, served to irritate her a great deal.

She was so not in the mood for this.

'Really? You got nothing at all?'

'Yeah. Sorry. The guy was a statue. Didn't so much as twitch, all day.'

Argo let out a frustrated sigh, before typing out her next reply.

'Okay, thanks for the help anyways. It was worth a try.'

'Do you want me to try again tomorrow?'

Argo thought about it for a moment before deciding.

'Is he showing up again tomorrow?'

'Well, he didn't say he wasn't. And the guy helping him with his trades didn't say he wasn't. Judging by the number of people that still want one of those ovules though, he'd be stupid to not show up. Unless he ran out of them, or something. '

'And he already left?'

'Yeah, he took off about 5 minutes ago. He used a teleport crystal to leave, and I couldn't find him when I tried to follow him. People are trying to question his assistant right now. But judging by the way he's been deflecting inquiries all day, it's unlikely that anyone is going to get any information out of him. You know how that guy is.'

She did indeed. One of those annoying, stubborn types that was simply immovable. Unwilling to back down or compromise on anything. She knew that she would have to pay an outrageous amount of cor to get someone like him to cough anything up. And with a merchant as wealthy as that guy's current employer was, even that probably wouldn't be enough.

She was pretty well off, all things considered, but she was almost certain that she wouldn't be able to sway that guy with money alone. Anything she offered could be easily doubled by that anonymous merchant. They probably even had an agreement set up along those lines.

'If someone tries to pay you to rat me out,' the merchant had probably said to his unreasonably stubborn assistant, 'just remember, I'll double it.'

Argo simply couldn't compete with that. She wasn't a whale that could afford to get into a bidding war.

'Don't worry about trying again tomorrow,' she decided.

'You sure?'

'Yeah. I'll go myself.'

AN: Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Have a good day!