A huge castle made of stone and steel floating in an endless sky.
That was all this world was.
It took a varied group of craftsmen one month to survey the place; the diameter of the base floor was about 10 kilometers—large enough that the entirety of Setagaya-ku would fit on it. Above, there were 100 floors stacked directly on top of each other; its sheer size was unbelievable. It was impossible to even guess how much data it consisted of.
Inside, there were a couple of large cities and countless small towns and villages, forests and plains, even lakes. Only one stairway linked each floor to another, and the stairways were in dungeons where large numbers of monsters roamed, so discovering and getting through was no easy matter. However, once someone broke through and arrived at a city in the higher floor, the «Teleport Gates» there and in every city in the lower floors would connect, making it possible for anyone to move freely through these levels.
Under these conditions, the huge castle had been steadily conquered over two years. The current front line is the 74th floor.
The name of the castle was «Aincrad», a world of battles with swords that continued floating and had engulfed approximately six thousand people. Otherwise known as...
«Sword Art Online»
Chapter 1
A grey sword cut my shoulder.
The thin line at the top left corner of my field of vision shrank slightly. At the same time a cold hand passed over my heart.
The blue line—called the “HP bar”—is a visual rendering of my life force. There was still a little over 80 percent left. No, that phrase isn’t appropriate enough. Right now, I was about 20 percent closer to death.
I dashed backwards before the enemy’s sword even began its attacking motion.
“Haaa…”
I forced a huge breath to steady myself. The «body» in this world didn’t need oxygen; but the body on the other side, or rather the body lying down in the real world, would be breathing heavily. My limp hands would be soaked with sweat, and my heartbeat would be off the charts.
Of course.
Even if everything I see right now is nothing more than a rendering of a 3D virtual reality, and the bar being reduced was nothing more than a bunch of numbers that showed my hit points, the fact that I was fighting for my life didn’t change.
When you think about it like that, this fight was extremely unfair. That’s because the «enemy» in front of me—a humanoid with dully shining arms covered in dark green scales and a lizard’s head and tail—was not a human, nor was it really alive. It was a digital lump that the system would replace however many times it was killed.
—No.
The AI that controlled the lizardman was studying my movements and enhancing its ability to respond to them with every second that passed. However, the moment that this unit was destroyed, the data was reset and wasn’t passed on to the unit that would be regenerated in this area.
So in a sense, this lizardman was also alive, a single being unique to this world.
“… right?”
There was no way that it would have understood the word that I had muttered to myself, but the lizardman (a level 82 monster called «Lizardman Lord») hissed and smiled, showing the sharp fangs that protruded from its long jaw.
It’s reality. Everything in this world is real. There’s no virtual reality or fakery of any kind.
I shifted the one-handed long sword in my right hand to waist-height and watched the enemy.
The lizardman moved the buckler in his left hand forward and drew back the scimitar to his right.
A chill breeze blew into the shadowed dungeon and the flame of the torch shook. The wet floor softly reflected the flickering torch-light.
“Kraaah!!”
With a tremendous scream, the lizardman leapt. The scimitar drew a sharp arc as it flew towards me. A blinding orange light lit its trajectory; a high-class one-hit sword skill of the curved sword «Fell Crescent». It was a formidable charge-type sword skill that covered a distance of 4 meters in 0.4 seconds.
But, I was already expecting the attack.
I had slowly increased the distance in order to induce the AI to create this situation. I closed in on the lizardman, my mind registering the burning smell that the scimitar left behind as it sliced through the air centimeters in front of my nose.
“… ha!”
With a short shout, I swung my sword horizontally. The sword, now covered in sky-blue light, cut through the thinly protected stomach and bright red light scattered instead of blood. There was a low scream.
However, my sword didn’t stop. The system assisted me through the programmed movements and chained the next slash with a speed that would normally have been impossible.
This is the most important element in battles in this world, «Sword Skill».
The sword sped off right from left and cut into the lizardman’s chest. In this state, I spun my body in a full circle and the third strike stuck the enemy more deeply than before.
“Raarrgh!”
As soon as the lizardman recovered from being stunned briefly because it failed to hit with a big skill, it screamed with rage or perhaps fear, and raised its scimitar high in the air.
But my chain had not ended. The sword that had been swinging right suddenly sprang, as if forced by a spring, left and up and hit its heart—a critical point.
The sky-blue rhombus drawn by my four consecutive hits flashed then scattered; a horizontal, consecutive 4-hit skill, «Horizontal Square».
The clear light shone strongly in the dungeon and then faded. At the same time, the HP bar above the Lizardman’s head disappeared without even a single dot left.
The huge body fell, leaving a long trail, then suddenly stopped awkwardly—
With a sound similar to breaking glass, it broke down into infinite polygons and disappeared.
This is the «Death» of this world. It is instantaneous and short, a perfect destruction, not leaving even a single trace.
I glanced at the virtual experience points and drop items I received, appearing in a purple font in the center of my vision, and swung my sword right and left before sheathing it in the scabbard on my back. I backed away a few steps and slid slowly down with my back against the dungeon wall.
I spat out the breath I was holding and closed my eyes. My temple started throbbing, perhaps from the fatigue from the long fight. I shook my head a couple of times to get rid of the pain and opened my eyes.
The shining clock at the bottom right of my field of vision showed that it was already past 3PM. I should get out of the labyrinth or I won’t make it to the city before dark.
“… should I get started?”
There was nobody here to listen, but I just spoke and got up slowly.
I was done with making progress for the day. I somehow escaped the hand of death again today. But after a brief rest, tomorrow will come with more battles. When fighting battles without a 100% chance of victory, however many safety nets you prepare, there’s going to be a day when you fall out of lady luck’s favor.
The problem is whether this game will be «cleared» or not before I draw the ace of spades.
If you value your life above all else, staying in a village and waiting for somebody else to clear the game is the wisest route to take. But I go to the front lines every day solo. Am I just simply an addict of VRMMO who keeps increasing his stats through countless battles, or—
Am I an idiot who insolently believes that he can win the freedom of everyone in this world with his sword?
As I started walking towards the labyrinth entrance with a slight smile of self-scorn, I thought back to that day.
Two years ago.
The moment that everything ended and began.
Chapter 2
“Ahh… ha… uwahh!”
The sword swinging to these strange shouts swished around, cutting nothing but air.
Right afterwards, the blue boar (which moved surprisingly quick considering its bulk) charged fiercely at its assailant. I burst into laughter, watching him fly through the air and roll on the hill after getting hit by the boar’s flat nose.
“Hahaha… not like that. The first movement is important, Klein.”
“Argh… that bastard.”
The complaining assailant, a party member called Klein, got up and glanced at me while answering plaintively.
“But Kirito, even if you say that… I can’t do anything about the fact that it’s moving.”
I met this person, who had reddish hair held up by a bandana and simple leather armor worn over his thin body, a few hours ago. If he had revealed his real name, it would have been hard to omit the honorifics, but his name (Klein) and mine (Kirito) were both names we had made up for our characters. Putting -san or -kun at the end of them would sound comical more than anything.
The legs of the person in question started shaking.
“Seems like he’s a little dizzy.”
I picked up a pebble from the undergrowth at my feet and raised it above my shoulder. As soon as the system detected the first motion of a sword skill, the pebble started giving off a slight green light.
After that, my left hand almost moved by itself and the pebble went flying, drawing a straight line of light and hitting the boar between its eyebrows. Ggiik! The boar squealed in fury and turned towards me.
“Of course they move, they’re not training dummies. But if you start the right motion, the system will put your sword skill into motion and hit the target for you.”
“Motion… motion…”
While muttering this like some spell, Klein raised the cutlass that he held in his right hand.
Although the blue boar, officially named «Frenzy Boar», was a level one monster, Klein had lost almost half of his HP from being hit by counterattacks due to his wild swings. Well, even if he died he’d just respawn at the «Starting City» near here, but coming all the way out to this hunting ground again was somewhat annoying.
It seemed like there was one move left before the fight reached its conclusion.
I cocked my head as I blocked the boar’s charge with the sword in my right hand.
“Hmm, how should I explain… It’s not like one, two, three, then strike. But more like gathering a bit of energy and then, as soon as you feel the skill start, it goes BAM and you feel it hit the monster…”
“Bam, eh?”
Klein’s roughly handsome face grimaced itself into an unsightly image as he leveled his sword at his waist.
Inhale, exhale; after taking a deep breath, he lowered his stance and raised his sword as if he was going to shoulder it. This time, the system sensed the pose correctly and the arcing sword slowly started shining orange.
“Ha!”
With his low yell, he jumped off the ground with a movement that was completely different from the ones before.
Swish—! With this crisp sound, the sword drew its flame red trajectory through the air. The «Reaver», a basic skill of the one-handed curved sword, struck the boar right in its neck as it was about to charge and got rid of the rest of its HP, which (like Klein’s) was about half full.
Guekk— it gave a pitiful cry and its large body shattered like glass and purple numbers appeared, showing how many virtual experience points I gained.
“Ye~~a~~h!”
Klein struck an over-blown pose of victory with a huge smile on his face and raised his left hand. I high-fived him and smiled again.
“Congrats on your first victory… but that boar—it’s about as hard as slimes from other games.”
“Eh, really? I thought it was some sort of semi-boss or something!”
“Not a chance.”
My smile became a little forced as I sheathed my sword on my back.
Even though I was teasing him, I understood what he was feeling right now. Since I had two more months of experience than him, it was only now that he could feel the exhilarating feeling of destroying his enemy with his own hands.
Klein started to use the same sword skill over and over again yelling as he did so, perhaps as a way of practicing. I left him alone and looked around.
The endlessly stretching plains gave off a beautiful red as the sun had started setting. Way up north, there was the silhouette of a forest, a sparkling lake down south, and I could just about make out the walls that surrounded the city to the east. To the west, there was a limitless sky going on forever with bunches of golden clouds drifting by.
We were at the plains that stretched to the west of the «Starting City», which was situated at the north end of the first floor of the colossal floating castle—«Aincrad». There should be numerous players fighting monsters around here, but because of the enormous size none of them were visible.
Finally seeming satisfied, Klein sheathed his sword and walked over while observing the area as well.
“But really… however many times I look around like this, I still can’t believe that this is «inside the game».”
“Well even if you say ‘inside’ it’s not like our souls were sucked in or anything. Our brain’s just seeing and hearing instead of our eyes and ears… with the signals that the «Nerve Gear» is sending,” I said with a shrug.
Klein pouted like a kid.
“You might be used to it now, but for me it’s the first time doing a «FullDive»! Isn’t it awesome? Really… it’s a relief that I was born in this era!”
“You’re exaggerating.”
But as I laughed, I totally agreed with him.
«Nerve Gear».
That’s the name of the hardware that drove this VRMMORPG—«Sword Art Online».
The basic structure of this machine is totally different from the older ones.
Unlike the old-style man-machine interface hardware like “flat screen monitors” or “hand-held controllers”, Nerve Gear only had a single interface: a streamlined interface that covered your whole head and face.
Inside, there were numerous signal transceivers. By using the electronic signals sent by those transceivers, the gear accessed the user’s brain itself. The user didn’t use their eyes or ears to see and hear, the signals went directly to their brain. In addition, the machine could access not only sight and sound, but also: touch, taste, and smell as well—that is to say, all five senses.
After slipping the Nerve Gear on, locking the strap under your chin, and speaking the initiation command («Link Start»), all noise fades away and you’re swathed in darkness. As soon as you pass the rainbow colored circle in the middle, you’re in another world made entirely of data.
So…
Half a year ago, this machine (which started selling in May, 2022) successfully created a «Virtual Reality». The electronics company which created the Nerve Gear called the actual act of linking to the virtual reality…
«FullDive».
It was a total seclusion from reality, fitting of the word “full”.
The reason for this is that the Nerve Gear not only sent fake signals to the five senses, it also blocked and rerouted the orders that the brain sent to the body.
This can be called the most basic requirement for moving freely in a virtual reality. If the body received the brain’s signals when the user was in FullDive, the moment the user decided they wanted to «run» their actual body would run into a wall.
Because the Nerve Gear could reroute the commands the brain sent through the spinal cord, Klein and I could both move our avatars around freely and swing our swords around.
We’ve completely leapt into the game.
The effect of this experience captivated me and many gamers like me, to the point where we were sure that we could never go back to the old touch-pens or motion sensors.
Klein was staring at the wind passing through the plains and the castle walls off in the distance with actual tears in his eyes.
“So SAO is the first game for the Nerve Gear that you’ve played?” I asked.
Klein, looking like a calmly handsome warrior from the Sengoku period, turned his head my way and nodded.
“Yeah.”
If he wore a serious expression on his face, he had an impressive bearing about him worthy of an actor from a historical play. Of course, this was different from his actual body in the real world. It was an avatar made out of nothing, based on choosing from a list of options.
Of course, I looked like a ridiculously handsome protagonist from some fantasy animation as well.
Klein continued in his low vigorous voice, which (of course) was different from his real voice as well.
“Well, to be exact, I sorta bought the hardware in a rush after I managed to get my hands on SAO. There were only ten thousand in the first batch, so I suppose I was really lucky…. Well, if I think about it, you were ten times luckier when you got picked for beta testing. They only picked a thousand!”
“Ah, yeah… I suppose.”
Klein kept staring at me. I unconsciously scratched my head.
I remembered the excitement and enthusiasm that «Sword Art Online» created when it was announced through the media like it was yesterday.
Nerve Gear had realized the future foundation for gaming with FullDive. However, due to the innovation of the actual machine, only unremarkable titles came forth for the all-important software. They were all puzzles, education related, or environmental type games; causing discontent among game addicts like me.
Nerve Gear can truly render a virtual reality.
But you could only walk 100 meters before you hit a wall in that world, it was really a huge letdown. It was almost unavoidable that hard core gamers like me, who had been deeply absorbed in the experience of being within the game, started anticipating a certain game genre.
We were waiting for a network response game, the kind that let millions of players log in and raise, fight with, and live as a character of their own—that is to say, an MMORPG.
When the anticipation and craving reached its limit, the first VRMMORPG was announced just in time, «Sword Art Online». The stage for the game is a floating castle consisting of 100 floors.
The players lived in a world with forests and lakes, relying only on their sword and drive to discover the route to the upper floors, defeat countless monsters, and make their way endlessly to the top.
«Magic», considered an indispensable part of fantasy MMORPGs, had been boldly left out. An almost endless number of skills, called «Sword Skills», were created. It was part of a plan to let players actually feel the experience of fighting with their own bodies through FullDive as much as possible.
Skills were varied, including productive skills (such as smithing, leather working, and sewing) and everyday skills (such as fishing, cooking, and playing music), allowing the player to not only adventure the huge game but also actually «live» in it. If they so wanted, and if their skill levels were high enough, they could buy a house and live as shepherds.
As the information was steadily revealed, the gamers’ enthusiasm only grew.
The beta test only recruited a thousand testers. It’s said that one hundred thousand people, the number of half the Nerve Gear sold at that time, volunteered to be a tester. Luck was the only reason that I got through the narrow gap and was picked. Beta testers also received the additional benefit of being able to pre-order the game.
The two months of beta testing were like a dream. At school I thought endlessly of my skill set, equipment, and items. I ran all the way home as soon as school ended and dived till dawn. The beta test ended in the blink of an eye. On the day my character was reset, I felt a sense of loss as if half of my actual self had been cut away.
And now—November 6, 2022, Sunday.
«Sword Art Online», after all the preparations were finished, officially started its online service at 1 PM.
Of course, I had been waiting for 30 minutes and then logged on without even a second's delay. When I checked the server, over ninety-five hundred people had already logged on. It seemed as if all of the people who had been lucky enough to get their hands on the game felt the same way I did. All the online shopping sites announced that the game was sold out seconds after it had gone on sale. The offline sales, which had started yesterday, had created lines of people who had queued up for four days, creating enough of a racket to get on the news. That meant that all the people who had been able to buy a copy of the game were almost all serious game addicts.
Klein’s actions showed this clearly as well.
After I had logged onto SAO, I started running through the nostalgic stone paved roads of the «Starting City», headed for the weapons shop. Realizing that I was a beta tester after seeing me start and dash, Klein ran over without any hesitation.
“Hey, teach me a few things!” he’d begged.
I wondered how he could be so shameless and demanding to a person he hadn’t met before. I was so lost for words it was almost amazing.
“Ah, er, then… why don’t we go to the weapon shop?” I answered like some NPC. We ended up forming a party and I began teaching him some basics of fighting. And that’s how we ended up in this current situation.
To tell the truth, I didn’t get along with people in real life; in games, perhaps even less so. During beta testing, I got to know a couple of people, but I didn’t get close enough to anyone to actually call them a friend.
But Klein had a side to him that grows on you, and I didn’t find this uncomfortable either. Thinking that I might be able to get along with him, I opened my mouth.
“So… what do you want to do? Do you want to keep hunting till you get used to it?”
“Sure! … is what I want to say, but…”
Klein’s delicate eyes looked at the bottom right of his vision. He must have been checking the time.
“… well, I should log off and eat. I ordered some pizza for 5:30.”
“Pretty thorough,” I said at a loss for words.
Klein thrust out his chest.
“Of course!” he said proudly. “I promised to meet some mates at the «Starting City» in a bit. I could introduce you to some of them and you could register them as friends. That way you could always send messages. How about it?”
“Errr… Hmmm…” I mumbled subconsciously.
I got along with Klein pretty well, but there was no guarantee that it’d be the same for his friends. I felt like there would be a higher chance of not getting along with them and, as a result, fall out with Klein as well.
“Should I…?”
Seeming to understand the reason for my not-so-confident answer, Klein shook his head.
“Ah, I don’t mean to force you. There’ll be a chance to introduce them sometime anyway.”
“… yeah. Sorry, and thanks.”
As soon as I thanked him, Klein shook his head vigorously.
“Hey, hey! I should be the one thanking you. I got a lot of help from you. I’ll pay you back sometime soon. Mentally.”
Klein smiled and took another look at the clock.
“… well, I’ll log off for a bit. Thanks a lot, Kirito. Be seein’ ya.”
With that, he put his hand forward. At that moment, I thought this person would have been a great leader in «another game» and shook his hand.
“Yeah, see you around.”
We each let go of the other’s hand.
That was the point where Aincrad, or Sword Art Online, stopped being just some fun game for me.
Klein stepped back a bit, put his right index finger and thumb together, and pulled downwards. This was the action that opened the «main menu window». Immediately afterwards, there was a ringing sound and a shining purple rectangle appeared.
I moved a bit, sat on a rock, and opened my menu too. I started moving my fingers to organize the items that I’d gotten from fighting the boar.
Then…
“Eh?” Klein said in a strange tone. “What’s this…? There’s no log out button.”
I stopped moving my fingers and raised my head at that.
“No button…? No way, look a bit closer,” I said, a bit confused.
The swordsman opened his eyes wide beneath the bandana and pushed his face closer to the menu.
The rectangle, wider than it was high, had a bunch of buttons to the left and a silhouette showing what equipment you had on to the right. At the bottom of the menu, there was a «LOG OUT» button that allowed you to escape from this world.
As I was turning my head to the inventory that listed the items I had gained over hours of fighting, Klein started speaking in an unusually high voice.
“It’s really not there. You take a look Kirito.”
“I told you that there’s no way that it’s not there…” I muttered with a sigh as I tapped on the button on the top left to go back to the menu screen.
The inventory window on the right closed and the main screen re-opened. To the left of the silhouette, which still had quite a lot of empty spaces, there was a long row of buttons.
I moved my hand down in a movement that had almost become a habit and…
My body froze.
It wasn’t here.
As Klein had said, the button that had been there during the beta test—no, even right after I’d logged on—had disappeared.
I stared at the empty space for a couple of seconds then looked through the menu, making sure that it hadn’t just changed its position. Klein looked up with “Right?” written on his face.
“… not there, right?”
“Yeah, it’s not there.”
I nodded, although it felt slightly annoying to agree so easily. Klein smiled and started rubbing his thick chin.
“Well, it’s the first day so these sort of bugs could occur. Around about now, the GMs should be crying by now from the number of messages flooding in,” Klein said calmly.
“Is it all right for you to stand around like that? You said that you ordered some pizza, didn’t you?” I asked teasingly.
“Ah, that’s right!”
I smiled as I watched him jump around, his eyes wide.
I threw away a couple of items I didn’t need from the inventory, which had turned red from having too many items, and then walked over to Klein.
“Argh! My anchovy pizza and ginger ale…!”
“Why don’t you call a GM? They might cut you off from their side.”
“I tried, but there’s no response. It’s already 5:25! Hey, Kirito! Isn’t there some other way to log out?”
After listening to what Klein, who was waving both arms, said…
My face became rigid. I felt a groundless fear send a chill down my back.
“Let’s see… to log out…” I said while thinking.
To get out of this virtual reality and back to my room, I have to: open the main menu, press the ‘Log Out’ button, and press ‘Yes’ on the window that popped up on the right. It was pretty simple. But… at the same time, apart from that procedure, I wasn’t aware of any other way of logging off.
I looked up at Klein’s face, situated quite a bit higher than my own, and shook my head.
“No… there’s none. If you want to log yourself off, you have to use the menu. Apart from that, there’s no other way.”
“That’s impossible… there’s got to be something!”
Klein suddenly started shouting as if he was denying my statement.
“Return! Log out! Escape!”
But of course nothing happened. There were no voice commands in SAO of that description.
After Klein shouted this and that and even jumped around, I spoke to him.
“Klein, it’s useless. Even the manual doesn’t have anything on emergency access terminations.”
“But… this is just stupid! Even if it’s a bug, I can’t even go back to my room and my body when I want to!” Klein shouted with a bewildered expression on his face.
I totally agreed with him.
This was impossible. It was complete nonsense. But it was indisputably the truth.
“Hey… what is this? It’s just really weird. Right now, we can’t get out of this game!”
Klein gave a desperate laugh then quickly started talking again.
“Wait, we can just turn the power off. Or just pull the «Gear» off.”
As I watched Klein move his hands as if he was trying to take off some invisible hat, I felt the anxiety returning.
“That’s impossible, both of them. Right now, we can’t move our bodies… our real bodies. The «Nerve Gear» intercepts all the signals that our brain is sending here,” I tapped the back of my head, “and reroutes them to move our avatars here.”
Klein slowly closed his mouth and put his hands down.
We both stood speechless for a while, each lost in thought.
To reach the FullDive state, the Nerve Gear intercepts the signals that our brain sends down our spines and translates them so that we can control our avatars in this world. So however wildly we swing our arm about here, the arm of my real body (lying on my bed right now) wouldn’t move an inch, ensuring that I wouldn’t hit my head against the corner of my table or anything.
But because of this function, we can’t cancel the FullDive of our own free will right now.
“… so unless the bug is fixed or somebody in the real world takes the Gear off, we have to wait it out?” Klein mumbled, still a little dazed.
I silently signaled my agreement.
“But I live by myself. You?”
I hesitated slightly but told him the truth.
“… I live with my mom and my younger sister, a family of three. I think that I’ll be forced out of Dive if I don’t come down for dinner…”
“What? H-How old is your sister?”
Klein suddenly looked at me, his eyes sparkling. I pushed his head away.
“You’re pretty calm right now, aren’t you? She’s in a sports club and hates games, so she’s got nothing in common with people like us… but more than that,” I spread my right arm in an attempt to change the subject. “Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“Well sure. Since it’s a bug.”
“No, I mean it’s not just a bug, it’s a «can't log out» bug. It’s a big enough problem to bother the operation of the game itself. Like your pizza in the real world is getting colder every second, it’s an actual economical loss, isn’t it?”
“… a cold pizza… that’s as meaningless as hard natto!”
I ignored these meaningless comments and kept talking.
“If it’s like this, the operators should take the server down and log everyone out, whatever the cause. But… it’s been 15 minutes since we first noticed this and there hasn’t even been a system message, let alone taking the server down. It’s just too weird.”
“Hmm, now that I think of it, you’re right.”
Klein started rubbing his chin with a serious expression on his face. In the area beneath the bandana, which covered a little bit of his sharp nose, intelligence sparkled in his eyes.
I started listening to Klein, feeling a little strange about talking with someone whom I’d never meet if I erased my account.
“… the company which created SAO, «Argus», is a company that’s famous for being considerate of its users, isn’t it? That’s why everyone was fighting to get their hands on a copy even though it’s the first online game. It’s sorta meaningless if they screw up like this on their first day.”
“I agree. And SAO is the first VRMMORPG. If something goes wrong now, they might pass regulations for the whole genre.”
Klein and I looked at each other’s virtual faces and sighed.
Aincrad’s seasons were based on reality, so it was early fall here as well.
I looked up, sucking in the virtual air; taking a deep, cold breath.
100 meters away, I could just about see the light purple bottom of the 2nd floor. As I followed the uneven surface, I saw the huge tower—the «labyrinth» that was the path to the upper floor—and saw that it was connected to the outer entrance.
It was just past 5:30 and the small strip of sky that could be seen was red with the light of the sunset. Despite the situation I was in, seeing the endless plains painted gold with the light of the evening sun, I found myself speechless in front of the beauty of this virtual world.
Right after that…
The world changed forever.
Chapter 3
Ding, ding… A chiming noise like a bell—or perhaps a warning chime—sounded loudly, making Klein and me jump in surprise.
“Ah…”
“What’s this!?”
We shouted at the same time and stared at each other, our eyes wide.
Both Klein and I were immersed in a clear blue pillar of light. Past the blue veil, the plains in my vision blurred steadily.
I’d experienced this a few times during beta testing. It was a «Teleport» initiated by an item. I didn’t have the prerequisite item nor did I shout the proper command. Did the operators initiate a forced teleport? If so, why didn’t they even inform us?
As my thoughts raced, the light around me pulsed stronger and darkness overtook me.
As the blue light faded, my surroundings became clear again. However, this wasn’t the sunset-lit plain anymore.
A large road paved with stone. Medieval streets surrounded by street-lamps and the huge palace radiating a dark light a fair distance away up ahead.
This was the starting point, the central plaza of the «Starting City».
I looked at Klein who had his mouth wide open next to me. Then at the bustling crowd of people that surrounded the two of us.
Looking at the bunch of stunningly beautiful people with a variety of equipment and different hair colors, they were no doubt other players like me. There were about a few thousand—ten thousand people here. It was likely that everyone who was logged on right now had been forcefully transported to the central plaza.
For a few seconds, everyone just looked around without speaking.
Then a few mumbles and mutters could be heard here and there; it started to get louder.
“What’s happening?”
“Can we log out now?”
“Can’t they take care of it quickly?”
Comments like these could be heard from time to time.
As the players started to get more annoyed, shouts like “Is this a joke?” and “Get the hell out here, GMs!” could be heard.
Then suddenly…
Somebody raised his voice above all these comments and shouted.
“Ah… look up!”
Klein and I almost automatically turned our eyes upward. There, a strange sight greeted us.
The bottom of the second floor, one hundred meters above us, was checkered in red.
When I looked closely, I could see that the pattern was made up of two phrases crisscrossing each other: the words [ Warning ] and [ System Announcement ] written in red.
I was surprised for a moment but then thought, “Oh, the operator’s going to begin informing us now,” and the tension in my shoulders eased a bit.
The chatter died down in the plaza and you could feel everyone waiting to hear what was going to be said.
However, what happened next wasn’t what I had expected.
From the middle of the pattern, a liquid that looked like blood started oozing down slowly. It came down at a rate that almost emphasized how viscous it was, but it didn’t fall all the way down; instead, it started congealing into a shape.
What appeared was a twenty-meter tall figure with a hooded robe draped around it.
No, that wasn’t exactly right. From where we were looking, we could easily see into the hood—there was no face. It was absolutely empty. We could clearly see the inner cloth and the green embroidery inside of the hood. It was the same inside the robe, all we could see inside the edges were shadows.
I’d seen that robe before. It was the same clothing that the Argus employees who worked as GMs during the beta test had always worn. But back then, the male GMs had a face like an old sorcerer with a long beard and the females had an avatar of a bespectacled girl. They might have used the robe because they lacked time to prepare a proper avatar, but the empty space inside the hood gave me an unexplainable feeling of anxiety.
The countless players around me must have felt the same.
“Is that a GM?”
“Why doesn’t it have a face?”
There were a lot of whispers that these.
Then the right sleeve of the huge robe moved as if to silence them.
A pure white glove appeared from the folds of the long sleeve. But this sleeve, like the rest of the robe, didn’t cover any sort of body.
Then the left sleeve slowly lifted upwards, too. Then with its two empty gloves spread out in front of ten thousand players, the faceless person opened his mouth—no, it felt like it did. Then a low, calm, male voice resonated from high in the air.
‘Players, I welcome you all to my world.’
I couldn’t understand it right away.
«My world»? If that red robe was a GM it certainly had godlike powers in this world, enabling him to change the world at will, but why was he pointing that out now?
Klein and I looked at each other, dumbfounded. The anonymous red robe lowered its arms and continued talking.
‘My name is Kayaba Akihiko. Right now, I am the only person who can control this world.’
“What…!?”
My avatar became rigid with shock, and a lump formed in its throat (and perhaps my throat back in the real world as well) for a second.
Kayaba—Akihiko!!
I knew that name. There was no way I didn’t.
This person, both a game designer and genius in the field of quantum physics, was the one responsible for raising Argus (which was just one of many small companies a few years ago) into one of the leading companies in its field.
He was also the development director of SAO and, at the same time, the designer of the Nerve Gear.
As a hard core gamer, I respected Kayaba deeply. I bought all the mags that featured him and read his few interviews until I almost knew them all by heart. I could almost see him in the white overalls he always wore by just hearing his voice.
But he had always stayed behind the scenes, refusing media exposure. He had never even been a GM, so why was he doing something like this?
I forced my mind to start moving again, trying to make sense of the situation. But the words that came out of the empty hood almost seemed to mock my efforts to understand.
‘I think that most of you have discovered the fact that the Log Out button has disappeared from the main menu. This is not a bug; it is all part of «Sword Art Online»’s system.’
“Part of… the system?” Klein muttered brokenly.
The announcement continued in its low voice as if to cover the sound.
‘Until you get to the top of this castle, you cannot log out of your own free will.’
This castle? I couldn’t understand this phrase at first. There’s no castle in the «Starting City».
Then the next thing that Kayaba said blew my confusion away.
‘… also, the disruption or dismantling of the Nerve Gear from the outside is strictly forbidden. If these things are attempted…’
A moment of silence.
The silence of ten thousand people was overwhelming. The next words came slowly.
‘The signal sensors in your Nerve Gear will emit a strong electromagnetic pulse, destroying your brain and stopping all of your basic functions.’
Klein and I stared at each other for seconds in shock.
It was as if my mind refused to believe what I had just heard. But Kayaba’s short statement pierced through my body with a ferocity that was both hard and dense.
Destroy our brains.
In other words, kill us.
Any user that turned the Nerve Gear off or unlocked the clasp and took it off would be killed. That is what Kayaba had just stated.
People in the crowd started muttering, but there was no one shouting or panicking. It was either that everyone, like me, couldn’t understand it yet, or refused to.
Klein raised his right hand slowly and tried to grasp the headgear that would be situated there in the real world. As he did, he let out a dry laugh and started talking.
“Haha… what’s he saying? That man, has he gone nuts? He’s not making any sense. The Nerve Gear… It’s just a game. Destroy our brain… How is he going to do that? Right, Kirito?”
His voice broke at the last shout. Klein stared at me hard, but I couldn’t nod in agreement.
The countless signal transceivers in the Nerve Gear’s helmet emitted small electronic pulses to send virtual signals to the brain.
They might call this the newest ultra-technology, but the basic theory was the same as a certain household appliance that’s been used for over 40 years in Japan—the microwave.
If there was sufficient output, it was possible that the Nerve Gear would vibrate the water particles in our brains and cook it with the heat from the friction. But…
“… theoretically it’s possible, but… he must be bluffing. Because if we pull the plug on the Nerve Gear, there’s no way it can emit a strong pulse of that type. Unless there’s some form of battery with a huge storage capability… inside….”
Klein already guessed the reason why I had stopped talking.
“There… is,” he said, his words almost a scream with a hollow expression on his face. “Thirty percent of the gear’s weight is in the battery. But… that’s totally crazy! What if there was a sudden power outage or something!?”
Kayaba started explaining, as if he had heard what Klein had shouted.
‘To be a little more specific, disconnection from an outside source of electricity for ten minutes, being cut off from the system for more than two hours, or any attempt to: unlock, dismantle, or destroy the Nerve Gear. If any of these conditions are met, the brain destruction sequence will start. These conditions have been made known to the government and the public through mass-media in the outside world. On that note, there have been several cases where the relatives or friends have ignored the warnings and tried to forcefully remove the Nerve Gear. The result…’
The metallic voice took a short breath here.
‘… regretfully 213 players have already exited this game, and the real world, forever.’
A long, thin scream was heard. But most of the players couldn’t or refused to believe what they had been told, and just stood there slack-jawed or with a wry smile on their faces.
My head tried to reject what Kayaba had just said. But my body betrayed it and my knees started shaking violently.
I stumbled back a few paces on my weak knees and managed to keep myself from falling. Klein fell on his backside, his expression lifeless.
213 players have already…
That phrase repeated over and over again in my head.
If what Kayaba said was true, over 200 people have already died?
Among them, there would have been beta testers like me. I might have even known some of their character names and avatars. These people had their brains burnt and… died, is that what Kayaba was saying?
“… don’t believe it…. I don’t believe it,” Klein, still sitting on the ground, started saying in a strained voice. “He’s just trying to scare us. How would he do such a thing? Stop kidding around and let us out. We don’t have time to play along to your sick opening ceremony. Yeah… this is all just an event. An opening show, right?”
Inside my head, I was screaming the same thing.
But as if to dispel our hopes, Kayaba’s businesslike voice resumed its explanation.
‘Players, there is no need to worry about the bodies you left on the other side. As of this moment, all TV, radio, and Internet media are repeatedly reporting this situation; including the fact that there have been numerous deaths. The danger of having your Nerve Gear taken off has already all but disappeared. In a moment, using the two hours I have provided, all of you will be transported to hospitals or similar institutes and be given the best treatment. So you can relax… and concentrate on beating the game.’
“What…?”
Then, at last, violent shouts left my mouth.
“What are you saying!? Beat the game!? You want us to play around in a situation like this!?”
I kept shouting, glaring at the red robe that had oozed out of the bottom of the upper floor.
“This isn’t a game anymore!!”
Then Kayaba Akihiko started announcing quietly with his monotonous voice.
‘But I ask of you all to understand that «Sword Art Online» is no longer a simple game. It is a second reality…. From now on, any form of revival in the game will no longer work. The moment your HP reaches 0, your avatar will be gone forever. And at the same time…’
I could guess what he was going to say all too clearly.
‘… your brain will be destroyed by the Nerve Gear.’
Suddenly, an urge to laugh out loud bubbled up from the pit of my stomach. I forced it down.
A long, horizontal line shone at the top-left corner of my vision. As I focused on it, the numbers 342/342 overlaid it.
Hit points. My life-force.
The moment it reaches zero, I will die—the electromagnetic waves will fry my brain, killing me instantaneously. This is what Kayaba had said.
This is without a doubt a game, a game with your life at stake. In other words, a death game.
I must have died at least 100 times during the two months of beta testing. I had re-spawned with a slightly embarrassed smile on my face in the palace north of the main plaza, the «Black Iron Palace», and ran off into the hunting grounds again.
That was what an RPG was: a sort of game where you keep dying and learning and leveling up. But now you can’t? Once you die, you’ll lose your life? And in addition… you can’t even stop playing?
“… no freaking way,” I muttered softly.
Who in their right mind would go out onto the field with those conditions? Of course everyone would just stay inside the city where it was safe.
Then, as if reading my (and maybe every other player’s) mind, came the next message.
‘Players, there is only one way to be freed from this game. As I have said before, you must get to the top of Aincrad, the one hundredth floor, and defeat the final boss that resides there. All players still alive at that time will be immediately logged out of the game. I give you all my word.’
Ten thousand players stood in silence.
It was then that I realized what Kayaba meant when he said, «get to the top of this castle».
“This castle” meant the huge monstrosity that imprisoned all of the players on the first floor, with ninety-nine more floors stacked on top of it, towering into the sky in which it floated. He was talking about Aincrad itself.
“Clear… all 100 floors!?” Klein suddenly shouted. He got up quickly and raised a fist up to the sky.
“And how do you want us to do that? I heard that getting up was crazy hard even during the beta testing!”
This was true. During the two months of beta testing, the one thousand players that had taken part only managed to get to the sixth floor. Even if ten thousand people had dived right now, how long would it take to get through all 100 floors?
Most players who had been forced here would be asking themselves this rhetorical question.
The strained silence eventually gave way to low murmuring. But there was no sign of fear or despair.
Most people here would still be confused about whether this was a «real danger» or a «seriously warped opening event». Everything Kayaba had said was so horrifying that it felt unreal.
I craned my head back to look at the empty robe and tried to force my mind to accept this situation.
I can no longer log out, ever. I can’t go back to my room, my life. The only way that I would get them back was when somebody defeated the boss on the highest floor of this floating castle. If my HP reached zero even once during that time—I would die. I would die a real death and I would be gone forever.
But…
However much I tried to accept these as facts, it was impossible. Just five or six hours ago, I had eaten the dinner that my mom made, shared a short conversation with my sister, then walked up the stairs of my house.
Now I can’t go back to all that? And this is now the real reality?
Then, the red robe that had always been one step ahead of us swept its right glove and started speaking with a voice void of all emotion.
‘Then I will show you evidence that this is the only reality. In your inventories, there will be a gift from me. Please confirm this.’
As soon as I heard this, I pressed my finger and thumb together and pulled downwards. All the players did likewise and the plaza was filled with the ringing sound of bells.
I pressed the Item button on the menu that appeared and the item was there, at the top of my belongings list.
The name of the item—«hand mirror»
Why did he give this to us? Even as I wondered, I tapped on the name and pressed the “Make Into Object” button. Immediately, there was a tinkling sound effect and a small, rectangular mirror appeared.
I grabbed it hesitantly but nothing happened. All that it showed was the face of the avatar that I had gone through a lot of trouble to create.
I cocked my head and looked at Klein. The samurai was also looking at the mirror in his hand with a blank expression.
… Then.
Suddenly Klein and the avatars around us were engulfed in white light. As soon as I took this in, I was surrounded too and all I could see was white.
Almost 2, 3 seconds later, the surroundings reappeared just as they had been…
No.
The face in front of me wasn’t the one I’d gotten used to.
The armor made of metal plates laced together, the bandana, and the spiky red hair were all the same. But the face had changed into another shape altogether. His long, sharp eyes had become sunken and shone brighter. His delicate and high nose had become hooked, and a slight beard now appeared on his cheeks and chin. If the avatar had been a young and carefree samurai, this one was a fallen warrior—or maybe a bandit.
I forgot about the situation for a moment and muttered.
“Who… are you?”
The same words came out of the mouth of the man in front of me.
“Hey… who’re you?”
Then I was gripped by a sudden foreboding and realized what Kayaba’s present, the «hand mirror», meant.
I raised the mirror in a rush, and the face stared back at me.
Black hair lay neatly over the head, two weak-looking eyes could be seen beneath the slightly long hair, and a delicate face that made people mistake me for a girl even now when I go out in casual clothes with my sister.
The calm face of a warrior that «Kirito» had even a few seconds ago was no longer there. The face that was in the mirror…
Was my actual face that I had tried so hard to escape from.
“Ah… it’s me…”
Klein, who had been also staring at his mirror, fell backwards. We both looked at each other and shouted at the same time.
“You’re Klein!?” “You’re Kirito!?”
Our voices had changed too. Perhaps the voice modulators had stopped working. But we didn’t have time to spare on things like that.
The mirrors fell from our hands and hit the ground. Then were destroyed with a soft, smashing sound.
When I looked around again, the crowd was no longer filled with people who looked like characters from a fantasy game. A bunch of normal looking young people had now taken their place. It was like something you’d see if you gathered a bunch of people in real life at a game show venue and dressed them up in armor. Distressingly, even the sex ratio had changed greatly.
How on earth was this possible? Klein and I, and most probably all the players around us, had changed from the avatars that we’d created from nothing to our real selves. Of course, the texture itself still seemed like a polygon model and it still felt slightly strange, but it was almost frighteningly accurate. It was as if the gear had a full body scanner on it.
—Scan.
“… ah, right!”
I looked at Klein and forced the words out.
“There are high density signal sensors in the Nerve Gear covering our whole head. So it can tell not only how our brains look, but our faces too…”
“B-But, how can it know what our bodies look like…. Like how tall we are?”
Klein said more silently glancing from side to side at our surroundings.
The average height of the players, who were now looking at their own and others’ faces with various expressions on their faces, had been noticeably reduced after the «change». I, and most probably Klein too, had set the height to equal that of my height in the real world to prevent my extra height from hindering my movements. But most players seemed to have made themselves taller by about ten to twenty centimeters.
That wasn’t all. The actual build and the girth of the players had become larger too. There was no way that the Nerve Gear would have been able to know all this.
Klein was the one who answered this question.
“Ah… wait. I bought the Nerve Gear just yesterday so I remember. There was a part of the set-up… what was it called, calibration? Well anyway, during that bit you touched your body here and there, maybe it was that…?”
“Ah, right… that’s what it was…”
Calibration was where the Nerve Gear measured «how much you had to move your hand to reach your body». This was done to reproduce the sense of kinetic accurately within the game. So to say, it was almost as if the Nerve Gear had data about our exact body shapes saved inside itself.
It was possible, making all the avatars of the players an almost perfect polygon replica of themselves. The purpose of this was also almost too clear now.
“… reality,” I muttered. “He said that this was reality. That this polygon avatar… and our HP was our real body and our real life. In order to make us believe this, he’s produced a perfect copy of us….”
“But… but y’know Kirito.”
Klein scratched his head roughly and the eyes beneath his bandana shone as he shouted.
“Why? Why the hell’s he doing something like this…?”
I didn’t answer that and pointed upwards past our heads.
“Wait a moment. Most probably, he’ll answer that in a bit anyway.”
Kayaba didn’t let me down. A few seconds later a voice, sounding almost solemn, sounded from the blood red sky.
‘You will all most probably be wondering, “Why.” Why am I—the creator of both the Nerve Gear and SAO, Kayaba Akihiko—doing something like this? Is this a sort of terrorist attack? Is he doing this to ransom us?’
It was then that Kayaba’s voice, which had been emotionless up to now, seemed to show some signs of emotion. Suddenly the word «empathy» passed through my mind, even though there was no way that would be true.
‘None of these is the reason I am doing this. Not only that, but now for me, there is no longer a reason or a purpose in doing this. The reason is because… this situation itself was my purpose in doing this. To create and watch this world is the only reason I have created the Nerve Gear and SAO. And now, everything has been realized.’
Then after a short break, Kayaba’s voice, now emotionless again, spoke.
‘… now I have finished the official tutorial for «Sword Art Online». Players—I wish you luck.’
This last sentence trailed off with a faint echo.
The huge robe rose soundlessly and started sinking, hood first, into the system message that covered the sky, as if melting.
Its shoulders, then its chest, then its two arms and legs merged into the red surface, and then a final red stain spread briefly. Right afterward, the system message that had covered the sky disappeared as suddenly as it appeared.
The sound of the wind blowing above the plaza and the BGM that the NPC orchestra was playing came softly to our ears.
The game had returned to its normal state, apart from the fact that a couple of rules had been changed.
Then—at last.
The crowd of ten thousand players gave a proper reaction.
In other words, countless voices started resounding loudly through the plaza.
“It’s a joke right…? The hell is this? It’s a joke right!?”
“Stop kidding around! Let me out! Let me out of here!”
“No! You can’t! I’ve got to meet someone soon!”
“I don’t like this! I’m gonna go home! I want to go home!!!!!!”
Yells. Clamors. Shouts. Curses. Begging. Screaming.
The people that had changed from game players to prisoners in a matter of minutes crouched clutching their heads, waved their arms about, grasped each other or started to swear loudly.
In the midst of all this noise, my mind became strangely cool again.
This… is reality.
What Kayaba Akihiko had declared was all true. If that was the case, this was all to be expected. It’d be strange not to expect it. This genius was one side of Kayaba that made him alluringly attractive.
Now I can’t return to reality for a while—perhaps a few months or maybe more than that. During this time, I can’t see my mother or sister nor talk to them. It was possible that I would never get the chance. If I died here—
I died in reality.
The Nerve Gear, once a game machine, is a lock to this prison and a tool of death that will fry my brain.
I breathed slowly in, then out, and opened my mouth.
“Klein, come over here for a sec.”
I grabbed the warrior’s arm, who seemed to be much older than me in real life, and made my way through the raving crowd.
We made it out of the crowd quite quickly, maybe because we were near the edge. We entered one of the many streets that led out of the plaza in a radial pattern and I jumped into the shadow behind an unmoving carriage.
“… Klein,” I called his name again.
He still had a somewhat blank expression on his face. I continued talking, trying my best to sound serious.
“Listen to me. I’m going to get out of this city and head over to the next village. Come with me.”
Klein opened his eyes wide under the bandana. I kept talking in a low voice, forcing the words out.
“If what he said was true, in order to survive in this world we have to strengthen ourselves. You know that MMORPGs are a battle for resources between the players. Only the people who can acquire the most money and experience can get stronger…. The people who’ve realized this are going to hunt all the monsters around the «Starting City». You’ll have to wait forever for the monsters to regenerate. Going to the next village right now would be better. I know the way and all the dangerous spots, so I can get there, even if I’m only level one.”
Considering that it was me, that was quite a long speech. But despite that, he stayed silent.
Then a few seconds later, his face scrunched up.
“But… but y’know. I said before that I stood in line for ages with my friends to buy this game. They would have logged in and most likely they’d be in the plaza even now. I can’t… go without them.
“…”
I let out a sigh and bit my lip.
I could understand all too well what Klein was trying to tell me through his nervous gaze.
He… was bright and was easy to get along with, and he most probably took care of other people pretty well. He was most definitely hoping that I’d take all his friends with him.
But I just couldn’t nod.
If it was just Klein, I could get to the next village while protecting us from aggressive monsters. But if there was even two more—no, even one more person coming along—it would be dangerous.
If somebody died along the way, they’d die as Kayaba had announced.
The responsibility would undoubtedly fall on me, who suggested setting out from the safe «Starting City» and failed to protect my comrade.
To bear such a heavy burden, I could never do that. It was just simply impossible.
Klein seemed to read all these worries that flashed through my mind. A smile appeared on his slightly bearded cheek and he shook his head.
“No… I can’t keep relying on you. I was a guild master in the game I used to play. It’ll be fine. I’ll just make do with the techniques that you’ve taught me till now. And… there’s still a chance that this was just a bad joke and that we’ll all be logged off. So don’t worry about us and go to the village.”
“…”
With my mouth closed, I was wracked by an indecision that I’d never felt before in my life.
Then I spoke the words that would gnaw at me for two years.
“… OK,” I nodded, stepped back, and said with my dry throat.
“Well, let’s part here. If anything comes up, send me a message…. Well, see you later, Klein.”
Klein called me as I turned my eyes downwards and turned to leave.
“Kirito!”
“…”
I sent him a questioning glance, but he didn’t say anything; his cheek only trembled a little.
I waved once and turned northwest, the direction of the village that I’d use as my next base.
When I had taken about five steps, a voice called out from behind me again.
“Hey, Kirito! You look pretty good in real life! You’re quite my style!”
I smiled bitterly and shouted over my shoulder.
“Your look suits you ten times better too!”
Then I turned my back on the first friend that I had made in this world and ran forward ceaselessly.
After I had run through the winding alleyways for a few minutes, I looked back again. Of course, there was nobody there.
I ignored the odd feeling of my chest being constricted and ran.
I ran desperately to the northwest gate of the Starting City and then past the large plains and the deep forest, then a small village located past all this—then past that to an endless, lonely game of survival.
Chapter 4
One month into the game, two thousand people were dead.
The hope that outside help would come had been crushed; not even a message had gotten through.
I didn’t see it myself, but they said that the panic and the madness that took hold of the players when they realized that they really couldn’t get back was unbelievable. There were people crying and others wailing, and some even tried to dig up the ground of the city saying that they were going to destroy this world. Of course, all buildings were non-destructible objects, so this attempt failed without any results to show for it.
They say that it took days for the players to accept the situation and think of what to do afterward.
The players were split into four big groups.
The first consisted of a little over half of the players; they were the ones who still wouldn’t accept the conditions that Kayaba Akihiko had put forth and still waited for outside help.
I understood what they were thinking painfully well. Their real bodies would be lying on a bed or sitting in a chair fast asleep. That was reality and this situation was the «fake», if there was even the smallest discovery they might be able to get out—of course, the log out button was gone but there might be something that the creators of the game might have overlooked—.
And outside, the company who ran the game, Argus, would be trying harder than anyone to save the players—if they could just wait, they might be able to open their eyes, have a teary reunion with their family and then return to school or work and this would all have been just something to talk about—.
It wasn’t really unreasonable to think like this. I think I was hoping for the same thing deep inside.
Their plan of action was to «wait». They didn’t take even a single step out of the city and used the money they had been allotted at the beginning of the game—the currency was called «Col» in this world—sparingly, buying only the food they needed to get through the day and finding cheap inns to sleep in, and walked around in groups spending each day without any thought.
Thankfully the «Starting City» was a city that took up twenty percent of the first floor’s surface and was large enough to fit a Tokyo district. So the five thousand players would have had sufficient room to live in.
But no help was forthcoming however long they waited. On some days, the sky outside was not a crystal blue but covered with grey clouds. Their money couldn’t last forever and they realized that they would have to do something.
The second group consisted of about thirty percent, or three thousand players. It was a group where all the players in it worked together. The leader of it was the admin of the largest online game info site.
The players who had gathered under this group were split into several groups and shared all of their gains, collected information on the game and set out to explore the labyrinth area where the stairs were. The leaders of this group set the «Black Iron Castle» up as their base of operations and sent orders to their various groups.
This huge group didn’t have a name for quite a while, but after all the members received a uniform, somebody gave them the, somewhat grim, name «The Army».
The third group was made of, at an estimate, a thousand players. It consisted of people who had wasted all their Col but didn’t want to make money by fighting monsters.
As a side-note, there were two basic bodily needs that existed in SAO. One was fatigue and the other was hunger.
I understood why fatigue existed. Virtual information and real information were no different to the users’ brains. If players became sleepy they could go to an inn and rent a room to sleep in depending on the amount of money they had in their pockets. If one hoarded a large amount of Col, they could buy a house, but the amount of money needed wasn’t small.
Hunger was a need that many players thought of as strange. Although they didn’t really want to imagine what was happening to their bodies in the real world, it was most probable that we were being force fed nutrients somehow. That meant that the emptiness we felt here had nothing to do with our real bodies.
But if we bought some virtual bread or meat in the game and ate it, the emptiness disappeared and we felt full. There was no way to find out how this strange mechanism worked, short of asking a professional in the field of neurology.
So the opposite was true too; the hunger didn’t disappear unless we ate something. We most probably wouldn’t die if we starved, but the fact that it’s a need that’s hard to ignore doesn’t change. So the players visited the restaurants that the NPCs ran daily and ate some food there, at least data-wise.
Also, there was no need to excrete waste in the game. As to what was happening in the real world, I didn’t even want to think about it.
Well back to the main point—
The players who had squandered all their money in the beginning, who couldn’t sleep or eat, usually joined the huge organization that I mentioned a while ago, «The Army». This was because they received at least something to eat if they followed the orders from the top.
But there are always those who can never cooperate with others however hard they try. The ones who never wanted to join, or got kicked out for causing trouble, set the slums of the «Starting City» as their base and started thieving.
Inside the city, or the places mostly referred to as «Safe Areas» were protected by the system and players couldn’t hurt each other. But it wasn’t like that outside. The stragglers made teams with other stragglers and ambushed other players—which was in many ways much more profitable than hunting monsters—out on the fields or the labyrinth areas.
Even then, they never «murdered» anybody—well at least during the first year.
This group got slowly larger until they reached the aforementioned number of a thousand.
The final, fourth group was, simply said, the rest.
There were fifty organizations made by the people who wanted to clear the game but didn’t join the huge organization. Their number was about five hundred. We called these groups «Guilds» and they had a mobility that «The Army» lacked; and using that, they steadily grew stronger.
Then there were the very few who chose the merchant and craftsman classes. They numbered only about two, three hundred, but they created guilds of their own and started training the skills that they would need to earn the Col they need to get by.
The rest, around one hundred players, were called «Solo Players»—this was the group I belonged in.
They were the selfish group who had decided that acting alone would be better for strengthening themselves and simply surviving. If one could use the information they had, they could level up quickly. After they had gained the power to fight against monsters and bandits by themselves, there was truthfully no merit in fighting with other players.
An additional feature of SAO was that there was no «Magic»; in other words, there were no «long range attacks with a 100% accuracy rate». so one could fight large groups of monsters alone. If one had the required skills, playing solo was much more effective experience point-wise than party playing.
Of course, there were risks involved. To give an example, if a person was «Paralyzed» and if he had party members with him, they’d just cure him and that’d be that. But if the person was playing solo, it could lead straight to death. Actually, in the very beginning, solo players had the highest fatality rate amongst all the players.
But if you had the experience and knowledge to win through all this danger, there was a much better compensation for all this risk, and the beta testers, including myself, had both of these things.
With this precious information, the solo players leveled up at a fierce pace, and soon a huge gap appeared between them and the rest of the players. After the game had calmed down a bit, most solo players got out of the first floor and used the cities in the upper levels as their bases.
Inside the Black Iron Castle, where the «Room of the Resurrected» had been during the beta testing, there now stood a huge metal monument that hadn’t even existed during beta testing. The names of all ten thousand players were carved on its surface. In addition, a line appeared on the name of the people who were dead, and it gave the time and reason of death next to it.
The first person to get the honor of having his name crossed out appeared three hours into the game.
The reason of death was not losing to a monster. It was suicide.
He believed in the theory that "according to the structure of the Nerve Gear, if a person is cut off from the system they’ll automatically regain consciousness." He climbed over the iron fence at the north end of the city, or the edge of Aincrad and flung himself off.
Beneath the floating castle that was Aincard, no sort of ground could be seen, however much you squinted. There was only an endless sky with several layers of white clouds. As countless players watched him, the boy got steadily smaller, leaving a long scream and finally disappearing into the clouds.
The short line was crossed mercilessly over the boy’s name two minutes later. The reason of death was «Falling in midair». I didn’t even want to imagine what he went through during those two minutes. There was no way of knowing if he had returned to the real world or—as Kayaba had said—had had his brain fried. But, most people believed that if there was such a simple way of escaping the game, the people outside would have already pulled the plugs and saved us.
But there were still some who gave in to this easy way of dealing with things. Most people, including me, found it hard to take the «Death» in SAO as reality.
That had still not changed. The phenomenon of the HP bar reaching zero and the polygons that consisted our bodies being destroyed was too much like the «Game Over» that we were all too familiar with. It was probable that the only way to understand the real meaning of death in SAO would be to experience it yourself. This shaky truth would have been the reason that the decrease in players slowed.
On the other hand, a lot of the players who were part of «The Army», especially the ones who had first belonged to the first group, started losing their lives while trying to clear the game and fighting monsters.
Fights in SAO needed a bit of getting used to. It was less like trying to force yourself to move but «entrusting» your movements to the system.
For example, even for a simple uppercut with a one-handed sword, if the player learned the «One-handed Sword Skill» and then equipped «Uppercut» from the list, they would only need to assume the starting motion; then the system would almost automatically move their body for them. But if someone without the skill tried to copy the movements, it would be too slow and weak to use in actual combat. It was like inputting commands in a fighting game.
The people who didn’t adjust to this just swung their swords around and even lost to the boars and wolves that they would have been able to beat if they used the single strike skills that they had on as default. Even then, if they just gave up and ran away after losing some of their HP, they wouldn’t have died but—
Unlike the attacks of 2D monsters that we see through a monitor screen, the battles in SAO were so real that you feel afraid. It was as if a real monster was baring its teeth at you and giving chase with the intention of killing you.
Even during the beta testing, there were some people who panicked in the middle of a fight, but now death awaited you if you lost. The panic-stricken players forgot about using their skills and even running away; their HP disappeared and they were expelled from this world forever.
Suicide, losing to monsters. The number of crossed out names multiplied at a terrifying pace.
When these reached two thousand, one month into the game, a cloud of despair hung over the surviving players. If the number of deaths kept increasing at this speed, all ten thousand would be dead in less than half a year. Clearing the hundredth floor seemed like a mere dream.
But—humans adapt.
A little over a month later, the first labyrinth was cleared and the number of deaths started to slow quickly. People started spreading information in order to survive and most people started to perceive that monsters weren’t all that scary if you gained enough experience points and leveled up properly.
It might be possible to clear the game and return to the real world. The number of players that started thinking like that increased slowly but steadily.
The top floor was still far away, but the players started moving with this vague hope—and the world started turning again.
Now, two years later and with twenty six floors left, the number of survivors is around six thousand.
This is the current situation in Aincrad.
Chapter 5
After ending my fight with a formidable enemy that prowled the «Labyrinth Area» of floor seventy-four, I recounted my way back, as well as the past, and let out a sigh of relief as I saw the light of the entrance.
I emptied my head, walked quickly out of the passageway, and took a deep breath of the fresh, clean air.
In front of me, a narrow lane went into the thick, overgrown forest. Behind me, the labyrinth area I had just come out of soared high into the sky—until the bottom of the next floor to be more precise.
Because the game was based on getting to the top of the castle, the dungeons in this world weren’t underground labyrinths but existed as towers. However, the basic setting hadn’t changed: monsters stronger than the ones you met out on the fields roamed within, while the boss monster waited for you in its deepest reaches.
Right now, eighty percent of the seventy-fourth floor labyrinth area had been explored, or in other words, had been «mapped». In a couple of days, the boss room would most probably be discovered, and a large-scale team would be made. Then, even I, a solo player, would take part.
I smiled at myself for feeling both expectant and frustrated at the same time and started walking down the lane.
For the moment, my hometown is the biggest city in Aincrad, «Algade», which was located on the fiftieth floor. Well, in mere size, the Starting City was larger, but that place had now totally become «The Army»’s base of operations, so it was a little uncomfortable to walk around in.
As soon as I made it out of the now darkening plains, a forest full of old trees stretched out before me. If I walked for thirty minutes through there, I would arrive at the «Housing Area» of the seventy-fourth floor and just use the «Teleport Gate» there to warp myself over to Algade.
I could always use one of the instant teleportation items in my inventory to return to Algade at any time. But since it was a little expensive, I was reluctant to use it unless I was in a dangerous situation. There was still some time before the sun disappeared completely, so I resisted the temptation of returning to my house as fast as I could and entered the forest.
As a rule, the edges of each floor in Aincrad were usually open to the sky, apart from the support pillars. The trees burned red from the light that entered through that gap. The mist that flowed in between the rays of light shone brilliantly as it reflected the light of the sunset. The cries of the birds, which were common during the day, were hard to hear now, while the sound of branches swaying in the wind seemed magnified.
I knew quite well that I could fight the monsters that appeared in this area even while half-asleep, but the fear that comes with the dark was hard to suppress. A feeling, similar to the one I had as a kid when I was trying to get back home after losing my way, filled me.
But I didn’t dislike this feeling. I had forgotten about this primitive fear sometime when I was living back on the other side. The feeling of loneliness that you get when you’re traveling the wilderness with nobody in sight however much you look—you could call this the essence of an RPG.
While I was absorbed in these nostalgic memories, a cry that I’d never heard before suddenly entered my ears.
It sounded only for a moment, high and clear like a reed pipe. I stopped my feet and carefully searched for the direction the sound came from. If you heard or saw something that you’d never experienced before in this world, it meant that you were either very lucky or the opposite.
As a solo player, I’d trained my «Scan for Enemy» skill. This skill prevented ambushes and when you became more proficient at it, it gave the player the additional ability of being able to detect monsters that were in "hiding." Through it, I could see a monster hiding between the branches ten meters away.
It wasn’t very big. It had green fur to camouflage itself in the leaves and had ears longer than its body. As I concentrated on it, it automatically became my target and a yellow cursor appeared along with its name.
I held my breath as soon as I read the name: «Ragout Rabbit». It was rare enough to earn the adjective "super."
It was the first time I’d actually seen the real thing. The plump rabbit that lived in the branches wasn’t all that strong, nor did it give you that many experience points, but-
I silently drew a thin throwing pick from my belt. My «Knife Throwing Skill» wasn’t all that high. I had simply chosen it as a branch on my skill tree at some point. But I’d heard that the Ragout Rabbit was the fastest monster among the ones that were currently known, so I didn’t really have much confidence in catching it with my sword.
I had one chance to attack before the opponent noticed me. I raised my pick, praying mentally, and assumed the «Single Shot» position.
Well, however low my skill was, my hand was backed up by my high dexterity and threw the pick in a blur of motion. The pick glinted once and then was sucked into the trees. As soon as I attacked, the cursor, which showed the direction the Ragout Rabbit was in, turned red and the HP bar appeared beneath it.
A high pitched scream sounded from the direction which I’d thrown my pick. The HP bar faltered a little and then went down to 0. The familiar sound of polygons shattering resounded.
I made a fist with my left hand. I raised my right hand and opened the main menu. I opened the inventory quickly, with even my hand movements seeming too slow to me, and it was there at the very top of the newly acquired item list: «Ragout Rabbit’s meat». It was a rare item that could be sold to other players at a minimum price of one hundred thousand Col. That amount of money was enough to tailor a full set of the best armor and still have change leftover.
The reason that this was so expensive was pretty simple, as it was set as the most delicious food ingredient among the numerous ingredients available in the game.
Eating was just about the only pleasure in SAO, but the only thing you could eat usually was the soup and bread that tasted as if they were from the European countryside—well not that I knew; but the fact was that it was plain. A few players who had trained their cooking skill had established this after a lot of thought in order to let the other players eat a wider range of foods. But even this wasn’t that easy to get across, so as a rule the players were all deprived of taste.
Of course, my current situation wasn’t much different, and I didn’t dislike the soup and full wheat bread the NPC restaurant that I frequented sold. But from time to time the need to eat at least a mouthful of juicy meat overtook me.
For a while I stared at the name of the item and kept wondering what to do. The chances of me getting this sort of ingredient again were very low. To be honest, I really wanted to eat it. But the higher the ingredients’ rank, the more skill was needed to actually cook it. So I had to find a master level cook to cook this for me.
But I didn’t know any. Well, I did know a few, but hunting them down for something like this was annoying. Even more than that, it was about time I got a new set of equipment. Consequently, I decided to sell it.
I closed the window as if to get rid of any regrets, and scanned the area with my skill. There wasn’t a very high chance of a bandit appearing on the front lines, but you couldn’t be too careful when you had an S-class item in your hands.
I’d be able to buy all the teleport items I wanted once I sold this, so I decided to minimize the risk involved and started rummaging through my pouch.
The thing that I’d taken out was a crystal shaped like an eight sided pillar that shone a rich blue. The few magic items in this world where «Magic» had been excluded were all shaped like gems. Blue was for instant teleportation, pink for recovering HP, green for antidotes, and so on. They were all convenient items that produced instant effects, but they were also expensive. So in most cases people used cheaper items such as slow-acting potions after running away from a fight.
Telling myself that this was, without a doubt, an emergency situation, I grasped the blue crystal and shouted.
“Teleport! Algade!”
There was the refreshing sound of many bells ringing and the crystal in my hand shattered into pieces. At the same time, my body was engulfed in blue light and the forest disappeared from my vision as if it was melting. A brighter light then flashed, and when it disappeared, the teleportation was over. In place of the sound of the rustling leaves, the sound of a smith hammering and the loud sounds of the city invaded my ears.
The place I appeared at was the «Teleport Gate» that was situated in the middle of Algade.
In the middle of the circular plaza, a gate made out of metal stood over five meters high. Inside, the air swirled as if a mirage, and people who were teleporting, or who had just teleported, came and went.
Four large roads stretched in all four directions out of the plaza, and on the sides of all these roads, countless small shops were gathered. The players who sought a short refuge after a day of exploring shared conversations in front of the food menus or pubs.
If someone tried to describe Algade in one word, it would be «messy».
There were no big streets like the ones you could see in the Starting City and crisscrossing alleyways covered the whole city. There were shops that you couldn’t even tell what they were selling, and inns that looked like you could never get back out once you went in.
Actually, there were a lot of players who’d accidentally gone into one of the alleyways of Algade and wandered for days before getting back out. I’ve been living here for almost a year now, but I still can’t remember half of them. Even the NPCs here were strange people whose class was hard to guess, and it makes you think that people who use this as a hometown these days are all sort of strange.
But I liked the feel of these streets. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that the only time I felt at peace was when I was sipping some strange smelling tea at a corner shop I frequented. The reason behind this was that I felt a little sentimental because it reminded me of an electronics store I used to frequent—well not really, or I hoped not.
Thinking that I’d deal with the item before going back to my house, I started walking towards a shop.
If I followed the road that led west out of the central plaza, I would arrive at the shop after working my way through the crowds for a little bit. Inside, it was so small that five players would feel cramped in there, and it had the trademark dizziness of a player shop: the tools, weapons, and even food ingredients were mixed up.
The shop owner was busily getting worked up bargaining.
There are two ways of selling items. One was selling to an NPC, a character controlled by the system. There was no danger of being tricked but the price was always the same. To stop inflation, the price was set lower than the actual market price.
The other was trading with another player. In this case, you could sell the item for a high price if you bargained well, but you had to find someone to buy it, and arguments between the players after completing the trade weren’t uncommon.
Therefore, merchant players who specialized in trading items appeared.
Merchant players couldn’t live on trading itself. Like the technician classes, they had to fill half of their skill slots with battle unrelated skills. But that didn’t mean that they could stay off the fields. Merchants had to fight for goods and technicians for ingredients, and, of course, they had a harder time than warriors. It was hard for them to feel the exhilarating feeling of beating an enemy.
Therefore, the reason that they chose these classes would be the noble one of helping the players who fought on the front lines every day. So I respected them deeply, if secretly.
…well, I respected them, but it was also true that the character in front of me was someone who was very far from self-sacrificing.
“Okay, it’s settled! Twenty-five «Dust Lizard’s hides» for five hundred Col!”
The owner of this shop I often came to, Agil, thumped his bargaining opponent, a weak looking spearman, on the back with his thick arm. Then he quickly opened the trade window and entered the amount in his trade list.
The opponent seemed to be thinking, but as soon as he viewed Agil’s face, which looked frightening enough to resemble one of a seasoned warrior—in fact, Agil was a top class axe warrior as well as a merchant—he hurried to put the items in his trade list and pressed OK.
“Thank you every time! Please visit again!”
Agil thumped the spearman’s back one last time and smiled brightly. The hide of the Dusk Lizard could be used to create high standard armor. I thought that five hundred was too cheap however you looked at it. But I stayed silent and watched the spearman leave. Take this as a lesson to never give any ground when bargaining, I muttered in my mind.
“Hey, you’re going about your business shamelessly as usual.”
The bald giant looked my way and smiled when I said this behind him.
“Hey, Kirito. Our shop’s motto is to buy cheap and sell cheap,” he said without any sign of remorse.
“Well, I’m a little suspicious about the ‘sell cheap’ bit but that doesn’t matter. I want to sell you something too.”
“You’re a regular, so I can’t trick you. Well, let’s see…”
As he said this, Agil stretched his thick, short neck and looked in the trade window that I’d offered.
The avatars in SAO were all replicas of the player’s real body which had been created through scans and calibrations. But every time I looked at Agil, I always asked myself how someone could have a body that fit him so well.
All 180 centimeters of his body were packed with muscle and fat, and the head that rested on top of it looked as if it’d fit a pro-wrestler villain. On top of that, he had set his hairstyle, one of the few things that could be customized, to be bald. The effect was at least as scary as the barbarian monsters.
Despite that, he had a charming face that looked childlike when he smiled. He looked in his late twenties but I couldn’t even guess what he did in the real world. Not asking others about «The other side» was an unspoken rule in this world.
The two eyes that were below his thick eyebrows widened as soon as he saw the trade window.
“Wow, it’s an S-rank rare item. «Ragout Rabbit’s meat», it’s the first time I’ve actually seen one… Kirito you’re not that poor are you? Don’t you have any thoughts of eating this?”
“Of course I have. It’ll be hard to come across something like this a second time… But it’s sort of hard to find someone who can cook something like this…”
Then someone behind me tapped my shoulder.
“Kirito-kun.”
It was a feminine voice. There weren’t many female players who knew my name. Well actually, in this situation there was only one. I grabbed the hand on my left shoulder and said.
“Cook acquired.”
“Wh-What?”
With her hand in mine, the person stammered with a suspicious expression on her face.
The small face, which was surrounded by long straight chestnut hair that was split neatly in two, was egg-shaped, and her two sparkling hazelnut eyes were almost blinding. Her thin body was covered by a red and white knight-like combat uniform, and there was an elegant silver-white rapier sheathed in her white leather scabbard.
Her name was Asuna. She was so famous that almost everybody in SAO knew her.
There were a lot of reasons, but the first was that she was one of the very few female players, and that she was the owner of a face that lacked nothing.
It’s hard to say this in this world, where everyone had their real bodies, but beautiful women were a super rare presence within it. You could most probably count the number of players that were as pretty as Asuna with your fingers.
Another reason that she’s famous was because of her red and white uniform which belonged to the guild «Knights of the Blood». The members are called KoB by taking the initials from «Knights of the Blood», and, out of the many guilds, everyone acknowledged them as the best.
It’s only a medium-sized guild of about thirty players, but they were all high leveled and seasoned warriors, with the leader of the guild being its strongest player and almost a legend within SAO. Also, contrary to her delicate frame, Asuna was the sub-leader. Her sword skill was so exceptional that it had earned her the title «Flash».
So her appearance and sword skill were at the zenith of six thousand players. It would have been strange for her not to have become famous. She had numerous fans, but among them there were some stalkers who virtually worship her, and there were also those who hate her, so it seems like she’s having a hard time.
Well, since she is a top class warrior, there shouldn’t be that many that would challenge her directly. But as if the guild wanted to show that they would protect her, she’s often trailed by two or more bodyguards. Even now, there were two men a few steps behind her fully equipped in metal armor and KoB uniforms. One of them, with his hair in a pony tail, was glaring at me, who had grabbed Asuna’s hand.
I let go of her hand, shook mine in his direction, and replied.
“What’s up, Asuna? For you to be coming to such a rubbish heap like this.”
The face of the man with the pony tail and the shop owner’s faces convulsed; one because I didn’t call Asuna with her title and the other because I called his shop a rubbish heap. But the shop owner...
“It’s been a while, Agil-san.”
...gave a sunny smile after hearing Asuna’s greeting.
Asuna looked back at me and pouted her lips in discontent.
“Hey, what’s this? After all the trouble I went through to see if you were alive for the boss fight that’s going to take place soon.”
“You’ve already listed me as a friend so you’d be able to tell if you just looked at that. Anyway the only reason you could find me was because you used a friend trace on your map.”
Asuna turned her head to the side as soon as I answered.
She was also responsible for progressing through the game in the guild as well as being a sub-leader. That job included searching out selfish solo players like me and forming a party to fight bosses. But even then, to actually come to see me, there should be a limit to how devoted a person could be.
Looking at my half-tired, half-amazed expression, Asuna put her hands on her hips before saying with a motion that was akin to raising her chin.
“Well, you’re alive and that’s all that matters. M-More than that, what do you mean? You were saying something about a chef or something.”
“Oh, right right. How high is your cooking skill right now?”
By what I knew, Asuna was particularly focused on raising her cooking skill whenever she found time in between training her sword skills. She answered my question with a proud smile.
“Listen and be surprised! I «Mastered» it last week.”
“What!?”
She’s…an idiot.
I thought that for a second. I didn’t say it out loud, of course.
Training skills was mind-numbingly boring and extremely time-consuming, and could only be «Mastered» after leveling them up 1000 times. On that note, levels didn’t have anything to do with skills and went up by gaining experience points. The things that went up with the levels were HP, strength, stats like dexterity, and the number of «Skill Slots» which decided how many skills you could learn.
Right now I had twelve slots, but the only ones that had been completed were my one-handed straight sword skill, Scan for Enemy skill, and my Weapon Guard skill. It meant that this girl had spent a lot of time and effort on a skill that wasn’t even of any help in battle.
“…well, I’ve got something to ask you to do, trusting that skill.”
I waved her over and put my window on show mode so that she could see it. Asuna looked at it suspiciously, and then her eyes widened at the name of the item.
“Uwa!! That…that’s an S-rank food ingredient!?”
“Let’s trade. If you cook this, I’ll let you have a bite.”
Even before I stopped talking, that right hand of «Flash» Asuna grabbed me by the collar. Then she pushed her face to a few centimeters before mine.
“Give. Me. Half!!”
My chest stopped at this sudden ambush and I nodded without thinking. When I got back to my senses it was too late, and she was waving her arm with excitement. Well, let’s consider it a good thing that I can watch that delicate face from so close. I convinced myself.
I closed the window and spoke while looking at Agil’s face.
“Sorry. I’ll stop the trade.”
“No. It’s fine but…hey, we’re friends right? Eh? Can’t you give me a taste…?”
“I’ll give you an eight hundred word essay on it.”
“D-Don’t be like that!”
As I cold-heartedly turned my back on Agil, he called out in a voice that seemed as if it was the end of the world. As I made to walk away, Asuna grabbed the sleeve of my coat.
“Cooking’s good, but where are we going to do it?”
“Ah…”
If you’re going to cook, then you needed some cooking appliances, such as a stove or an oven, as well as the ingredients. It wasn’t as if my house didn’t have them, but I couldn’t invite the sub-leader of the KoB into a messy place like that.
Asuna looked at me with an unbelieving expression on her face.
“Well, your house wouldn’t have the proper appliances anyway. But I could serve it to you in my house just this once.”
She said something shocking in a calm voice.
Asuna ignored me, who was standing there frozen as if I was lagging while my brain processed this, and turned to her guards and spoke.
“I’m going to teleport to «Salemburg» soon, so its fine if you go. Thank you for your hard work.”
“A-Asuna-sama! Coming into the slums was bad enough, but to invite someone as suspicious as him to your house. Wh-What are you thinking!?”
I couldn’t believe what I just heard. «Sama» he said. He must be one of the worshipers. As I looked at Asuna with these thoughts, the person in question had an annoyed expression on her face.
“OK, maybe you could call him suspicious, but his skill is unquestionable. He’s most probably ten levels above you Cradil.”
“Wh-What are you saying? To say that I’m not even equal to someone like that…!”
The man’s voice sounded all the way out to the alley. He glared at me with his heavily lidded eyes. Then his face scrunched up as if he suddenly recognized something.
“That’s right…you, you were definitely a «Beater»!”
Beater was made by mixing «Beta tester» and «Cheater». It was a word meant for people who used unfair means and a swearword that was unique to SAO. It was something I’d heard a lot of times. But however many times I heard it, it still hurt me deeply. The face of the person who had first said it to me, who had once been a friend, suddenly appeared in my head.
“Yeah. You’re right.”
When I affirmed it with an expressionless face, the guy started talking excitedly.
“Asuna-sama, these sorts of guys don’t care about anything as long as they’re fine! There’s nothing to gain from mixing with these kinds of people!”
Asuna, who had been calm until now, suddenly knotted her eyebrows in disgust. A crowd had suddenly appeared and the words «KoB» and «Asuna» could be heard here and there.
Asuna looked around and said to the man who was getting more excited by the minute.
“Well, please leave for today. That’s an order.”
She spoke bluntly and grabbed my belt with her left hand. Then she started walking towards the gate plaza, dragging me as she went.
“Err…hey! Is it okay to leave them like that?”
“It’s fine!”
Well, I’ve got no reason to complain. We made our way through the crowd, leaving the two guards and Agil, who was still disappointed. When I glanced back one last time, the furious expression of the man called Cradil stuck to my vision like an afterimage.
Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, dan 5 SAO
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
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