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I was rewatching Sword Art Online and I notice that Heathcliff KILLS him and
yet, he is able to come back and finish off Heathcliff, how is this so?


CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-07-24T00:26:39.467
13007
2015-03-22T22:25:28.380
5000
question
sword-art-online
How does Kirito come back to life when he's fighting Heathcliff?


Logically, there is a delay in between the death flag being detected and the
NerveGear frying the brain, which is explain by how a Revival Item ([Divine
Stone of Returning
Soul](http://swordartonline.wikia.com/wiki/Divine_Stone_of_Returning_Soul))
can be used within 10 seconds of a player's death.

However, as for how Kirito, whose HP was 0 but was still able to affect
Heathcliff, was explained by Kayaba Akihiko when he congratulated Kirito for
doing something that went beyond the system by using the power of the human
will. This concept is reasserted when Kayaba appears before Kirito in ALO and
reminds Kirito about how he acknowledged this.

It's more of an anomaly rather than any sort of plot hole. In essence, Kirito
shouldn't have been able to do anything when his HP reached 0, but he was
still determined to end the game because Asuna believed he would end the game
for her sake. That determination allowed him to transcend SAO's rules.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-07-24T00:42:27.550
13009
2015-01-19T17:33:21.933
2015-01-19T17:33:21.933
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Kirito didn't come back to life. The whole "You are dead" and then scattering
to pieces, and then coming back to life was the anime's dramatization. It was
never like that. It was simply there to say that Kirito's mind had accepted
death. However, Kirito had **not** died in real life yet, and he had a sudden
burst of will and resolution to live, by which he then altered the game's so
called "rules". This is not a bug, it is simply because the virtual world they
lived in was, well, **virtual**. In a way, it's simply an image projected by
the brain, and is supported by a system. Because he had a strong resolution,
he was able to defeat the game's rules just in time to defeat Heathcliff.

**However** , this is not the end of it all. Asuna's died way before this
happened. To explain why she was able to survive: Heathcliff had turned off
the system's mechanism of killing a person in real life by frying the brain
upon in-game death, which was an in-game module, right before the duel
started. Thus, even though Asuna had died in-game, she was not killed in real
life because Kayaba had disabled the module that fries the brain. The area
they were in at the end was neither an imagination, a dream, nor any kind of
afterlife. It was a special area Kayaba created in order to talk to Kirito
after the duel. Whether he had won or not, Kirito would meet Kayaba in that
area


CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-19T07:03:06.637
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2015-03-22T08:17:49.327
2015-03-22T08:17:49.327
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Kirito need to live on was great enough to where he could mentally hack the
game sort of so he delayed the deleting proses long enough for him to kill
Kayaba. Also because of Kayaba being defeated, he did not have to hold on any
longer he was already safe. Also to correct what another said, Asuna did not
die because the creator of Alfhiem Online spent a long time gathering her very
essence and sending her to his game before the Nervegear fried her and was
under his control.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-03-22T07:09:11.740
20237
2015-03-22T07:34:04.730
2015-03-22T07:34:04.730
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answer