The next day, at the Red Wings' guild headquarters, Asuna announced before all the members that she would be temporarily stepping down as vice leader and leaving the guild.
This caused an uproar throughout the guild without the slightest suspense.
A vice leader suddenly resigning and leaving the guild was no ordinary matter for any guild, much less when the person in question was Asuna—the former Ghost of Strategy of SAO, the genius rapier wielder known as the Flash, and the Berserk Healer of ALO, who had placed among the top three in the all-race martial arts tournament. On top of that, she was the guild leader's wife in the game and his fiancée in real life. It was impossible for her sudden resignation not to cause an uproar.
Even though Asuna repeatedly stressed that it was only temporary, many people had already learned from those who had accompanied Luo Zhen and the others to the sightseeing island on the 24th Floor the previous day and witnessed their duel with Yuuki that Yuuki's goal was to invite a powerful player to temporarily join her guild. Thus, everyone understood that Asuna was temporarily resigning in order to join the Sleeping Knights.
This naturally made many people worried.
After all, it was easy to say "temporary," but who could say whether temporary might eventually become permanent?
In the past, there had been plenty of players who had merely left their teams temporarily to join other players' teams to clear dungeons, only to grow fond of those teams and no longer wish to return to their original ones. Similar things often happened in guilds as well, and many players had left once and never returned. As a result, many guilds and teams kept extremely strict control over their permanent members, refusing to agree