After witnessing the fight Kirito puts up while winning his first preliminary match, a man clad in a ragged cloak asks him, "Are you the real deal?" This man, who sports a tattoo from Laughing Coffin - a Player Killing guild that formerly existed within SAO - leaves Kirito with the words "Someday, I'll kill you" and vanishes. This brush with the man in the ragged cloak causes Kirito to recall all his desperate battles in SAO, and he is almost broken by the trauma. It is then that Kirito and Sinon, having both advanced in the preliminary round, face off in the Block F final, but...

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•