Aincrad 1 Page 2

  “So is SAO your first NerveGear game, period?”

  “Yeah.” Klein nodded, turning his gallant face to me, like some proud samurai from the distant past.

  When he maintained a serious expression, he could have been the lead actor in a period piece, but this did not reflect his real-life appearance. It was nothing more than a virtual avatar created from scratch out of a robust list of finely tuned parameters.

  Naturally, I had also chosen a look befitting the hero of a fantasy anime, almost embarrassing in its shameless elegance.

  Klein continued in a strong and clear voice, also likely to be falsified.

  “Actually, I got SAO first, so I needed to buy the hardware just to play it. I mean, the first shipment was only ten thousand copies, right? I’m one of the lucky ones. Although, since you’ve been playing SAO since the beta test, that makes you ten times as lucky. There were only around a thousand testers!”

  “I guess you could say that.” I scratched my head as he stared holes into me.

  I could remember as though it were yesterday the excitement and enthusiasm that swept through the media when Sword Art Online was announced.

  The NerveGear and its revolutionary new full-dive format were so novel that the actual software to take advantage of it lagged in response. Initial offerings were simple puzzle and educational titles, a source of serious disappointment to full-blown game addicts like me.

  The NerveGear creates a true virtual world. But the effect of such freedom is entirely lost when the world you inhabit is so small that an impassable wall can be found within a hundred yards in any direction. Hardcore gamers like me were initially entranced by the experience of truly being inside a game, but it was only a matter of time before we sought a killer title in one very specific genre.

  We wanted an MMORPG—an online game that hosted thousands of players in the same vast world together, living, fighting, and adventuring.

  Just when desire and expectations had reached their peak came the announcement of Sword Art Online, the first-ever entry in the VRMMO genre.

  The game took place in a massive floating fortress made up of a hundred expansive levels. Armed with nothing but the weapons in their hands, players explored each floor, packed with fields, forests, and towns, looking for the staircase upward and defeating terrifying guardian monsters in their quest to reach the top.

  Unlike typical fantasy-themed MMOs, the concept of magic spells had been largely excised from the setting, making way for a nearly limitless combination of special attacks called “sword skills.” This was an intentional move to maximize the full-dive experience, forcing players to use their own bodies and swords to fight.

  Skills applied not just to combat but also to crafting disciplines like blacksmithing, leatherworking, and tailoring; productive endeavors such as fishing and cooking; and even creative pursuits such as playing musical instruments. Therefore, players weren’t limited to adventuring within the vast virtual world—they could literally choose their own lifestyle within the game. With enough hard work, a player could buy a home, till fields, and raise sheep if he chose.

  As details of these features trickled out in stages, enthusiasm among the gaming public rose to a fever pitch. A beta test was announced, in which a thousand players would be granted access to the game before release to help stress test the system and isolate software bugs. The developer was quickly swamped with more than 100,000 applicants, which represented nearly half of all NerveGear units sold at that point. That I somehow managed to slip through the crowd into one of those valuable slots was nothing short of a miracle. Not only that, being a beta tester gave me priority access to the retail edition of the game when it hit the market.

  The two months of the beta test were like a fever dream. Even at school, my head was swimming with thoughts of my skill loadout and equipment, and once I got home, I dove into the game until dawn. In no time at all, the beta test ended, and when my character data was erased, it felt like I had lost a part of myself.

  The day was Sunday, November 6, 2022.

  At 1:00 PM, Sword Art Online would finally go live to the public.

  I was ready a full thirty minutes early, of course, logging in without a second’s hesitation and checking the server status to confirm that more than 9,500 lucky purchasers were brimming with anticipation just as I was. The major online retailers had sold out of their initial shipments in seconds, and brick-and-mortar shops had made the news with crowds lining up three days early to get copies of the game. In other words, everyone who managed to secure a copy of SAO was almost certainly a serious gaming addict.

  My first interaction with Klein seemed to support that assumption.

  As I logged in to SAO and marched down the familiar cobblestones of the Town of Beginnings, I ducked into a back alley heading for a particularly cheap weapons dealer. He must have noticed my lack of hesitation and pegged me for a beta tester. “Hey, spare some advice?” Klein hailed me.

  Impressed by his utter lack of restraint, I tried to pass myself off as a helpful town guide NPC with a feeble, “H-hello…Are you looking for the weapon shop?” Soon we were grouped together into a party, followed by some hands-on combat lessons outside of town—and here we were.

  Frankly speaking, I was at least as antisocial in the game as I was in real life, if not more so. I grew familiar with many other gamers during the beta test, but there wasn’t a single one of them I’d have called a friend.

  But this Klein fellow had a mysterious ability to slip past one’s defenses and latch on, and to my surprise, I didn’t really mind. Thinking that I might actually be able to stick around with him, I opened my mouth again.

  “So, what now? Want to keep hunting until you get the hang of it?”

  “You bet your ass I do! Or…normally I would…”

  Klein’s shapely eyes darted to the right—he was checking the time readout displayed in the corner of his vision.

  “But I need to log out for a bit to eat dinner. I scheduled a pizza delivery for five thirty.”

  “Now there’s a guy who comes prepared.” I sighed.

  Klein straightened up and continued as though he’d just thought of something. “Um, so, I’m gonna go back to the Town of Beginnings after this and meet up with some friends I made in another game. If I introduce you, would you want to add them to your friends list? It makes it easy to send messages to each other.”

  “Uh, hmm…” I stammered.

  I found it easy to get along with Klein, but there was no guarantee I’d hit it off with his friends. In fact, it seemed all too easy to envision feeling uncomfortable around them, which might make things awkward with Klein himself.

  “Yeah, well…”

  As I failed to give a clear response, Klein quickly shook his head in understanding.

  “I mean, I’m not saying you have to. There’ll be other chances to meet them.”

  “…Sure. Thanks for asking, though,” I apologized, as Klein shook his head again.

  “None of that! I’m the one who should be thanking you! You helped me out a ton; I’ll make it up to you sometime. Y’know, mentally.”

  He grinned and checked the time again.

  “All right, man, I’m gonna log out for now. Thanks again, Kirito. We gotta hang out sometime.”

  As I reached out and grasped his extended hand, it occurred to me that this man was probably an excellent leader in that “other game” he’d played.

  “Sure thing. If you ever have any questions, just ask.”

  “Yeah. Will do.”

  We released the handshake.

  This was the instant that Aincrad, the world of Sword Art Online, stopped simply being a fun game, a pleasant diversion.

  Klein took one step backward, held out the index and middle fingers on his right hand, and swung them downward—the action that called up the game’s main menu screen. With a sound like bells jingling, a translucent purple rectangle materialized in midair.

  I took a few steps
backward myself, sitting down on a nearby rock to open my own window. My fingers traced the display as I sorted the items I’d earned from fighting boars.

  The next instant—

  “Huh?” Klein muttered, perplexed. “What the heck? There’s no log-out button.”

  At those last words, I stopped moving my hand and looked up.

  “No button? That can’t be true. Look closer,” I said, exasperated. The tall scimitar-wielding hero leaned over, his eyes wide beneath the ugly bandanna as he stared at the window.

  In its default state, the elongated horizontal window featured several menu tabs on the left and a human silhouette on the right detailing the user’s inventory and equipment. At the very bottom of that menu was a LOG OUT button that enabled the player to leave the world—or at least, there should have been.

  As I returned my gaze to the list of items I’d earned over the last few hours of battle, Klein repeated himself, louder this time.

  “No. It’s just gone. You should see for yourself, Kirito.”

  “I’m telling you, it has to be there…” I sighed, then tapped the button in the upper left of the screen that led back to the main menu.

  My item storage display closed smoothly, returning the window to its default state. The silhouette reappeared, several equipment slots still empty, and the list of menu tabs materialized again on the left.

  With a familiar motion, I slid my finger down to the bottom button…

  And all of my muscles froze solid.

  It was gone.

  During the beta test—in fact, just after logging in at one o’clock today—the log-out button was right in the corner, but as Klein noted, it had simply disappeared.

  I stared at the blank space for several seconds, then moved my eyes upward, carefully scanning the menu tabs to ensure that it hadn’t simply changed positions when I wasn’t paying attention. Klein tilted his head at me as though to say, See?

  “…Gone, right?”

  “Yep. Gone,” I reluctantly agreed.

  He raised his cheeks in a grimace and stroked his shapely chin.

  “Well, it is launch day. Bugs happen. I bet tech support is getting drowned in calls. They’re probably tearing their hair out right now,” he said nonchalantly, to which I gave a barbed retort.

  “Is that all you have to say about it? Weren’t you just talking about getting a pizza delivery at five thirty?”

  “Oh crap, that’s right!”

  I grinned despite myself at the sight of him bolting upright, wide-eyed with alarm.

  The red glow of my inventory screen subsided as I discarded enough junk items to squeeze back under the weight limit. Standing up, I walked over to Klein, who wailed on about lost anchovy pizzas and ginger ale.

  “Look, you should try opening a support ticket with the GMs. They might be able to boot you off from the system side,” I suggested.

  “I tried that, but there was no response. Man, it’s already five twenty-five! Kirito, was there any other way to log out of the game?” he pleaded pathetically, his hands outstretched.

  My lazy grin stiffened. A vague sense of anxiety began to chill my spine.

  “Let’s see…Logging out, logging out…,” I muttered.

  To leave the game and return to my room back in the real world was simply a matter of opening the menu window, hitting the log-out button, then confirming the action when a safety prompt appeared. It was quite easy—but I didn’t actually know of any other way to leave.

  I looked up at Klein’s face above me and slowly shook my head.

  “Nope. There’s no way to manually log out other than through the menu.”

  “But that’s crazy. There has to be a way out of this!” Klein wailed, as though denying my answer would make it untrue. “Go back! Log out! Exit!!”

  But nothing happened. SAO did not respond to voice commands.

  He continued shouting and chanting, eventually growing agitated enough to leap about, until I called out in a low voice.

  “It won’t work, Klein. The manual doesn’t say anything about an emergency termination method, either.”

  “But…but that’s crazy! I know games have bugs, but not the kind where you can’t even get back to your own home, your own body, your own free will!”

  Klein turned around to me, his face aghast. I agreed with him. This was crazy. It was absurd. But it was the reality we were facing.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me…This can’t be happening. We’re trapped inside the stupid game!” Klein ranted, breaking into a panicked laugh. “I know—I’ll just power off the machine. Or rip the NerveGear off my head.”

  Klein rubbed his hands over his head as though removing an invisible hat, but I felt the cold anxiety return.

  “We can’t do either of those things. We can’t move our actual bodies. The NerveGear intercepts all the commands going from our brains to the rest of our limbs.”

  I tapped the back of my neck with my fingers.

  “The system translates those commands into actions within the game. It’s the only way we’re able to move our avatars like this.”

  Klein fell silent and slowly lowered his arms.

  We remained locked in place for a moment, our minds racing.

  In order for the NerveGear to successfully create the full-dive experience, it has to read the movement signals going from the brain to the spine, cancel them out, and translate them into digital actions within the game world. No matter how desperately I waved my arms inside the game, my real body would remain motionless on my bed, ensuring that I wouldn’t bruise myself hitting the corner of my desk by accident.

  But it was that very feature that now physically prevented me from disengaging the dive.

  “So does this mean we either have to wait for the bug to be fixed or for someone to pull the headgear off of our bodies?” Klein muttered, still dumbfounded.

  I gave him a silent nod.

  “But I live by myself. You?”

  I hesitated, then answered honestly. “I live with my mom and little sister. I bet that if I don’t come down for dinner, they’ll eventually force me out of the dive.”

  “Oh? H-how old’s your sister?” Klein leaned forward, his eyes suddenly sparkling. I pushed his head away.

  “That sure got you to take your mind off the situation, didn’t it? Look, she’s on a sports club at school and she hates video games. She has nothing in common with people like us. Besides”—I waved my hand, trying to change the subject—“don’t you think this is weird?”

  “Sure it is. The game is buggy.”

  “This isn’t just any old bug. Not being able to log out is a huge deal. It could spell disaster for the game’s future. Even as we speak, your pizza is getting colder by the second. That represents a real monetary loss for you, doesn’t it?”

  “Cold pizza is worse than nattō that doesn’t get sticky,” Klein muttered cryptically. I continued.

  “A situation like this means the programmers have to shut down the servers and force all the players offline. And yet, even though it’s been at least fifteen minutes since we discovered this bug, not only are we still online, there hasn’t even been an official announcement within the game. It makes no sense.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good point.” Klein rubbed his chin, finally looking suitably serious. His slender eyes glinted beneath the bandanna stretched over the high bridge of his nose.

  I listened to Klein continue, struck by how odd it was that I was discussing such real-world affairs with a person I’d only met by sheer chance and would likely never see again if I simply deleted my game account.

  “Argus, the developers of SAO, made a name for themselves based on their customer outreach. The fact that their first online game was so highly anticipated is a sign of how much trust the community has in them. How could they ruin that reputation with such a stunning screwup on their very first day?”

  “Exactly. Not only that, SAO is the very first example of a VRMMO. If this turns into a h
uge controversy, the entire genre could get regulated out of existence.”

  Klein and I sighed slowly at the same time, our virtual faces turned to each other.

  Aincrad’s climate was attuned to the real-life season, meaning that it was early winter in the game, just as it was outside.

  I breathed in the chilly air deeply, filling my lungs with virtual oxygen, and looked skyward.

  More than a hundred yards above, the bottom of the second floor glowed a faint purple. As I followed the flat, rocky surface toward the horizon, my eyes finally rested on a vast tower far in the distance—the labyrinth that would lead to the next level of the castle. Beyond that, I could even see the aperture on the far side of the floor.

  It was now past 5:30, and the sliver of sky to be seen over the vast distance was glowing crimson. The setting sun shone through, lighting the rippling fields in a dazzling gold, and I found myself at a loss for words despite the gravity of our situation.

  In the next instant…

  The world changed forever.

  3

  Klein and I jumped to our feet, startled by a sudden ringing sound, blaring like an alarm at full volume.

  “Wha…?”

  “What’s that?”

  We shouted simultaneously, then noticed each other’s bodies, our eyes wide.

  Both Klein and I were enveloped in pillars of brilliant blue light. The scenery of the fields faded out behind the colored film.

  I’d experienced this phenomenon multiple times during the beta test. It was the teleport effect that took place when you used an item to travel instantaneously across the game. But I didn’t have the right item, nor had I given the system any such command. If it was a system-side forced teleportation, why was it happening without any announcement?

  As my mind raced, the light surrounding me pulsed stronger, blocking my vision.

  The blue light faded, and the environment returned but was no longer the evening field in which we had been standing. I was greeted by wide paving stones, trees lining the street, and a cleanly elegant medieval town. In the far distance straight ahead, a massive palace gleamed darkly.