It does seem like Kirito disconnected, and what we see is some kind of cached placeholder.
It's probably just a matter of fixing his hardware and logging him back in, will be done within an hour... but what was the acceleration rate of Underworld again? 1000x or something?
Anyway, stuff is going to happen while he's AFK and I guess that's what this arc is about.
There's no way that Kirito would actually die for plot reasons, but he might actually be totally fried IRL, and get restored as a fully digital entity.
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