The act of intentionally bringing the HP of another player to zero is known as Player Killing (commonly referred to as PKing for short). There are a wide variety of reasons PKers exist, such as an easy chance to obtain items in a player's inventory, settling a grudge, or in some cases for the sheer enjoyment of playing the villain. In CNO, PKing will earn players bits and drops from the killed player. While traveling about in the fields, players are advised to be on guard for any potential PKers lying in wait to avoid such situations.

-Lepus Guide to CNO: Player Killing (PK)

The familiar sensation of rain pelted down on Violet as she stood in the dark forests of Floor 49 in Aincrad. Lightning flashed in the skies. But none of that mattered to Violet. To her, time itself seemed to have come to a standstill as her mind tried to process what had just happened.

Shattering polygons that had once been the avatar of a player floated in the air. At first, everything was completely silent. But then she heard laughter echoing through the air.

They had killed a person. Not just in the game, but in the real world. And they were laughing about it.

Violet's surroundings turned to black. Nothing existed around her. Nothing other than herself and the monsters that found pleasure in this sickening act. She tightened her grip on her longsword to the point that the weapon might break. Without warning, she kicked off the ground and let out a blood-curdling cry.

"RAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

Barely any conscious thought came from Violet. She was acting on pure instinct right now. Flashes of light came every now and then, but her eyes were fixated on the player retreating. Others attempted to attack Violet, blocking her path. A few flashes of light later, they too were nothing more than polygons. But they had succeeded in their objective. Already, the player Violet had been chasing was blending into the shadows of the dark woods.

"Get back here!" Violet shouted. "Get back here, dammit! I'm not done with you!"

But her demands fell on deaf ears. The image of the player vanished with the darkness. His chuckling echoed throughout her head. As if it was coming in every direction.

Countless images of the player appeared around Violet. But each time she cut one down, it simply evaporated into dust. Each time the chuckling grew louder.

All of a sudden, Hana shot up from her bed. As her senses returned to her, the realization that she had simply been dreaming slowly sank in. Her fingers trembled as they gripped the sheets of her bed. Why had this dream plagued her so often? She couldn't remember a single month passing since her return from SAO that she hadn't experienced this dream at least once. Who was she kidding? She knew full well the reason why.

That day was the worst day of her two years trapped in the floating castle of Aincrad.

Hana got up from her bed and walked to the bathroom. She turned on the sink and splashed some water in her face to calm herself down. The nightmares she got about that horrible night were rather mild now all things considered. Her first couple months home, she had apparently woken up screaming at the top of her lungs when she had that nightmare.

She had gone through it all. Talking about it. Counselors. But nothing she did ever seemed to make the nightmares go away for good. She considered herself fortunate if she was able to go more than two weeks without experiencing some variation of it.

Fortunately, Hana managed to get another couple hours of sleep before her alarm woke her up again. Once it was morning, she ate a quick breakfast and was out the door on her way to school.

After the sudden PK she and Tae had experienced yesterday once they took down Dante, the two of them had decided to cut their hunting short. They hadn't done too bad all things considered. Neither of them lost anything of real value to whoever had blasted them to kingdom come, and they had earned more from monster drops that day than they had lost from the death penalty. But what neither she nor Tae could figure out was who had hired Dante to kill them in the first place.

Hana let out a sigh. There wasn't much use worrying about it. She and Tae both doubted this was the end. Whether Dante's client was after her, Tae, or both of them, this more than likely wasn't the end. All they could do for now was wait, as annoying as that was.

Besides, compared to SAO, a game where it was ok to die didn't faze her nearly as much.

Before long, Hana's usual morning commute was over and she arrived at the front gates of the SAO Survivor's School. Several other students were also walking inside on their way to homeroom. Hana pushed her thoughts about CNO to the side and thought about her classes for today. But as she walked past the front gates, a voice called out to her.

"Hey Violet."

"Hm?" Hana turned and saw her old guildmate Gale, or rather Seiji, walking over to her. "Oh. Hello Gale. Is there something you need?"

"I just thought I'd remind you about that offer from the other day." Seiji told her. "You're still more than welcome to rejoin the guild if you want to."

"I appreciate the offer, but my answer is still no." Hana said. "I'm more comfortable playing solo right now."

Seiji raised a brow with a knowing grin. "Solo, huh? For claiming to play solo, you sure seem to party with that one other player rather often. What was his name again? Tae?"

Hana's body stiffened slightly. "I party with him every once in a while, yes. But I don't see how that's any of your business."

"I simply don't want to see you getting hurt because of him." Seiji shrugged. "After all, you've already gotten PKed because of him once now, haven't you?"

"How do you-" Hana narrowed her eyes as she realized what all this meant. "You were the one who hired Dante."

"Don't take it personally. I told Dante to take out Tae. You simply happened to be with him at a bad time."

"What is it you're after?" Hana asked. "If it's the Ultra Core, I can assure you you'll need to do a lot more than hiring a PKer to get Tae to give it up."

"Oh I'm sure." Seiji shrugged. "But you might want to keep your distance from that friend of yours. I'd hate to see you get caught in the crossfire again after all."

"Why are you hiring PKers in the first place? You of all people should hate the idea of them."

"I'm working to bring Sparrow Wing back, and bring them to greater heights than ever. If I have to resort to a few minor dirty tactics to do so, then so be it."

Hana couldn't believe the words that were coming from her friend's mouth. He had never been like this back during their time in Aincrad. "Gale, listen to yourself. Do you even realize what your-"

"Oh I almost forgot…" Seiji interrupted. "Does that friend of yours know by the way? About that thing you did back in SAO."

In that instant, it was as if a pile of bricks were suddenly pressing down on top of Hana. She grabbed her right arm to stop it from trembling. "Don't go bringing that up. You know I hate it."

"Oh that's right. I forgot it was a bit of a sore spot for you. But you know, if you keep hanging around him, it's only a matter of time before he finds out about your past."

"Stop it…"

Seiji walked past Hana and towards the school building. "The Ultra Core is a special item that will greatly bolster Sparrow Wing up in CNO. But I might be persuaded to leave it be if the request came from a friend." Seiji spared one last glance at Hana before moving on. "You are a friend of Sparrow Wing, aren't you?"

Hana stood still as Seiji left her. This development was far from what she had been expecting. She now stood at the crossroads between her new friend and her former guild. On top of all that, her darkest secret, one known only by her guild, was quickly rising to the surface.

What was she supposed to do?

Considering the skill Dante had shown when he fought against us yesterday, it was surprisingly hard to get any concrete information on the guy.

As with almost any MMO, there were a number of online forums related to CNO. I had decided to spend the better part of my lunch break searching through them for any information on Dante, the PKer who had attacked Violet and I. Even though the two of us had gotten killed after the fight, I doubted this was over. There were no guarantees that whoever hired him would keep him around considering he lost to Violet and I, but even a small lead was better than nothing.

So far, all I had been able to find was that he was a semi-well known mercenary in CNO and primarily used a Diablo model NBS. He took a variety of jobs from escorting to PKing and everything in between. Other than that, the information ranged vastly. Even the weapon he used differed from post to post. As for how to even contact him in the first place, I couldn't find even the smallest scrap.

I let out a sigh as I went back to eating my lunch. Why had someone hired Dante in the first place? Were they after the Ultra Core I had? Did they have a grudge against me or Violet? And if so, what was the grudge about? There were too many questions and not nearly enough answers.

One thing was for sure. If Dante attacked me when I was alone, I probably wouldn't be so lucky as last time. The main reason Dante hadn't killed me was because Violet was there to back me up. My current level of skill wasn't cutting it anymore. I had to get better if I was going to protect myself.

As the bell to signal the end of lunch period came, I made a mental note to myself to ask Shingo later if he knew of any good equipment that might help me. I headed off to my afternoon classes.

My remaining classes passed by uneventfully, and before long it was time to head home. After the long walk back, I returned to my house. Dad would still be at work at this time, but both my mom and Akari were home getting ready for the afternoon taekwondo class they taught. Akari had been helping our mother teach for the past couple years, as she was the one who would inherit the dojo from her eventually.

As I walked in through the front door, I heard Akari's voice further in. "Hey Takeshi, is that you?"

"Nah, I'm a burglar here to rob you." I commented sarcastically.

Akari didn't miss a beat as she quipped back. "Cool. In that case Mr. Burglar, feel free to take anything in my brother's room. I won't miss it. And if you see him, remind him to get his homework done before he goes playing on that virtual machine thingy."

Jokes aside, I knew I'd have hell to pay if I put gaming before homework. Perhaps it was because she was always in charge whenever our parents were away, but she was always on top of me as if she was a second mother instead of my older sister.

Thankfully, my homework load today was rather light so I managed to finish within an hour. The shouts coming from the dojo told me that the students for the afternoon class had already arrived and were already in the middle of their lesson. Since Mom and Akari would be busy for the next hour or so, I went upstairs to my room and slipped on my AmuSphere - or as Akari put it, my "virtual machine thingy".

I laid down on my bed and closed my eyes. Turning on the AmuSphere, I dived into CNO. "Link Start!"

Once the sense check was completed, I was greeted with the familiar sight of Serulis. It was a weekday so there were slightly less players logged on right now compared to the weekend. In fact, there was a decent chance that neither Shingo nor Violet would be on now.

I swiped my hand down and opened up my menu to check who was online. But before I even had the chance to open my [Friends] tab in the menu, I noticed a message in my inbox from Violet. Curious as to what it was, I tapped on the notification and opened up the message. Perhaps she wanted to do some more hunting to make up for our losses yesterday. Or maybe she had gotten lucky and figured something out regarding Dante and whoever hired him.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

[It's over between us, Tae. I can't party up with you anymore. Don't try to contact me. Goodbye. -Violet]

My eyes scanned the message over and over again. I had to be reading this wrong. Where was this coming from? Perhaps this was her idea of a bad joke? Violet's sense of humor may have been lacking compared to mine, but this was something else entirely.

I had a bad feeling in my gut and went to my Friend's List to be certain. And unfortunately, my bad feeling turned out to be right on the mark.

Violet's name was gone from the list.

A/N: I'm back with a new chapter, readers. I was originally planning to split this into two chapters due to the difference in perspectives between Violet and Tae, but it was just too short for my tastes and I decided to put them together as one chapter.

As you can tell from this chapter, things are starting to progress even faster now with this arc. How will Tae deal with Violet splitting off from him? What will become of Violet with Sparrow Wing looming over her? And what is her dark secret that Gale knows? If you want to find out, you'll just have to wait for the next chapter.