“An, yeah, I suppose.”
Cline 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.
NERvGear had realized the future setting 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, calling forth discontent from game addicts such as myself.
NERvGear can truthfully 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. That hardcore gamers such as myself, who had been deeply absorbed with the experience of being within the game, had started waiting for a certain game genre was almost unavoidable.
We had started waiting for a network response game—a sort that let millions of players log in and raise, fight with and live as a character of their own, that is to say—a 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 on only their sword and drive to discover the route to the upper floors and defeat countless monsters and make their way endlessly to the top.
«Magic» which was considered to be an indispensable part of fantasy MMORPGs had been boldly cut out and an almost endless number of skills called «Sword Skills» were made. It was part of a plan to let players actually feel the experience of fighting with their own bodies through full dive as much as possible.
Skills were varied including productive skills such as smithery, 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 they can 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 steadily kept being revealed, the gamers’ enthusiasm only got higher.
The beta test only recruited a thousand testers, it’s said that one hundred thousand people, the number of half the NERvGear sold at that time, volunteered to be a tester. Luck was the only reason that I got through the narrow gap and was picked. Also, beta testers received the additional benefit of being given the priority when the game officially came out.
The two months of beta testing was like a dream. At school I thought endlessly of my skill set, equipment and items, and ran all the way to my house as soon as school ended and dived till dawn. The beta test ended in the blink of an eye, and 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 11, 2022, Sunday.
«Sword Art Online» after all the preparations had been finished and at 1PM officially started its server service.
Of course, I had been waiting for 30 minutes and then logged on without even a second delay, but when I checked the state of 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 had felt the same as I did. All the online shopping sites announced that the game was sold out seconds after it had gone on sale and 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 go 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.
The actions of Cline showed this clearly as well.
After I had logged onto SAO, I started running through the nostalgic stone paved roads of the «Starting City» to go to the weapons shop. Realizing that I was a beta tester after seeing me start and dashing without any hesitation, Cline ran over.
“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. Being so lost for words that it was almost amazement.
“Ah, er, then…why don’t we go to the weapon shop?” I answered like some NPC; we then ended up making 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 or in games, perhaps even less so than in real life. During beta testing I came to know a couple of people, but I didn’t get close enough to anyone to actually call them a friend.
But Cline 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…”
Cline’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, Cline spread 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 would always send messages. How about it?”
“Errr… Hmmm…,” I mumbled subconsciously.
I got along with Cline pretty well but there was no guarantee that it’d be the same for his friends. I felt like that there would be a higher chance of not getting along with them and as a result, fall out with Cline as well.
“Should I…?”
Seemingly understanding the reason for my not-so-confident answer, Cline 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, Cline shook his head vigorously.
“Hey, hey! I should be the one thanking you. I received a lot of help from you. I’ll pay you back sometime soon. Mentally.”
Cline smiled and took another look at the clock.
“…well, I’ll log off for a bit. Thanks a lot, Kirito. Be seeing 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 let go of each other’s hand.
That was the point where Aincrad, or Sword Art Online, stopped being just some fun game for me.
Cline stepped back a bit and put his right index finger and thumb together and pulled downwards. This was the action that was done to call the «main menu window». Straight afterwards there was a ringing sound and a shining purple rectangle appeared.
I moved a bit and sat on a rock and opened my menu too. I started to move my fingers to organize the items that I’d gotten after fighting with the boar.
Then.
“Eh?” Cline said in a strange tone.
“What’s this? …there’s no log out button.”
At that I stopped moving my fingers and raised my head.
“No button…? No way, look a bit closer.”
I said a bit confused. The swordsman opened his eyes wide beneath the bandanna and pushed his head closer to the menu. The rectangle, which was longer sideways than high, had a bunch of buttons on the left and a silhouette showing what equipment you had on on 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 item list that listed the items that I had gained over hours of fighting, Cline 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
clicked on the button on the top left to go back to the menu screen.
The inventory window on the right closed and it went back to the main screen. At 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 Cline 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. Cline 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. Cline 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 amount of messages flooding in,” Cline said calmly.
“Is it alright 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 due to having too many items inside, and then walked over to Cline.
“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 Cline said while waving both of his arms—
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 the procedure above I wasn’t aware of any other way of logging off.
I looked up at Cline’s face, which was situated quite a bit higher than my own, and shook my head.
“No…there’s none. If you want to log out yourself you have to use the menu, apart from that there’s no other way.”
“That’s impossible…there’s got to be something!”
Cline suddenly starting shouting as if he was denying my statement.
“Return! Log out! Escape!”
But of course, nothing happened. There were no voice commands on SAO of that description.
After shouting this and that and even jumping, I spoke to Cline.
“Cline, 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!” Cline shouted with a bewildered expression on his face.
I totally agreed with him.
This was impossible. It was complete non-sense. But it was indisputably the truth.
“Hey…what is this? It’s really just weird. Right now, we can’t get out of this game!”
Cline gave out 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 Cline 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 «NERvGear» receives all the signals that our brain is sending here…” I tapped the back of my head. “… and reroutes them to move our avatars here.”
Cline slowly closed his mouth and put his hands down.
We both stood speechless for a while, each lost in thought.
To attain the Full Dive state the NERvGear blocks the signals that our brain sends down our spines and changes 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, which was 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 Full Dive 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?” Cline 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?”
Cline suddenly looked at me, his eyes sparkling. I pushed his head away.
“You’re pretty calm right now, aren’t you? She’s part of the 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 an «impossible to 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…it’s as meaningless as hard natto!”
I ignored these meaningless comments and kept talking.
“If it’s like this, the operators should put the server down and log everyone out whatever the case. But…it’s already been 15 minutes since we’ve noticed this but there hasn’t even been a system message, let alone putting the server down, it’s just too weird.”
“Hmm, now that I think of it, you’re right.”
Now Cline started rubbing his chin with a serious expression on his face. In the area beneath the bandanna, which covered a little bit of his sharp nose, intelligence sparkled in his eyes.
I started listening to Cline, feeling a little strange about talking with someone who I’d never meet if I erased my account.
“…the company which created SAO, «Argas» is a company that’s famous for being considerate about 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 put down regulations for the genre itself.”
Cline 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 bell, sounded loudly, making Cline and me jump in surprise.
“Ah…”
“What’s this!?”
We shouted at the same time and stared at each other, both of our eyes wide.
Both Cline and I were immersed in a clear blue pillar of light. Past the blue v
eil, the plains in my vision blurred steadily.
I’ve 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 plains lit with the sunset 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 Cline who had his mouth wide open next to me. Then at the bustling layers 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 a word.
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 above!”
Cline and I almost automatically turned our eyes upward and looked. There a strange sight greeted us.
The bottom surface of the second floor, one hundred meters up in the air, was checkered in red.
When I looked closely I could make out that they were made up of two phrases crisscrossing each other. The word that was written in red was [Warning] and the other [System Announcement].
Sword Art Online - Volume 1 - Aincrad Page 2