Heh... another story. I've pretty much given up on a consistent schedule of any kind at this point.
The OC in this one is heavily inspired by the OC in Sword Art Online, Through Angel written by AnimaniacComin'AtYa.
I'm very creative! *Sarcasm drips off words in gallons*
Despite the previous comment, I don't intend to have this story follow closely to Sword Art Online, Through Angel, though at the start it may.
Btw, I don't actually know how sign language works, especially Japanese sign language, so... yeah.
(1st person, Akiko, November 1st, 2022)
Sword Art Online, the brand new game coming out on the 6th that ran on the NerveGear and was made by the NerveGear's developer. The NerveGear was a VR device that connected directly to the brain, intercepting off all signals from brain to body and using them to control the in-game avatar while feeding visuals, touch, smell, taste, and even sound directly to the brain. It completely bypassed the need for functioning ears, so maybe, I would be able to hear in that world.
Unfortunately, I was by no means the only person who wanted to get their hands on the device, so getting my hands on one of the 9000 that would be sold on the 5th would be difficult. But I had to. Absolutely had to. I had failed to get the Beta, but that was completely a lottery. Various game competitions had given out tickets to the lottery, but you could only enter once, which I had done.
Through some miracle, I was at the front of the line and the NerveGears weren't sold out yet... barely, this was the last one. Which meant... it meant I could finally know what it would be like to hear. I bought the NerveGear and left swiftly, who knew what the people who hadn't gotten one were thinking, but it probably wasn't too friendly, after all, they probably wanted to get their hands on it too. Of course they wouldn't actually do anything, but being around them made me feel 'slightly' uncomfortable. For a deaf 12 year old girl to be wandering around on their own probably wasn't normal... yeah okay, I should probably be with someone. But I can handle myself, well probably anyway. And besides, there are plenty of people on these roads who would step in to help a pretty young girl, even assuming someone was willing to for some reason attack in the middle of a populated street. For that matter, the chances of an attack at all, regardless of where I go in this area, are incredibly low.
Anyway, all that's left now is to set up the NerveGear and wait till 1pm tomorrow when the servers open.
It took about 30 minutes to walk home and I immediately head to my room. Mom was probably out getting groceries and dad was still at work, so the house was completely empty.
I take the NerveGear out of the box, along with the SAO in what looked like a USB drive with a custom plug, I guess they didn't bother building the interface for downloading it and instead just gave you a USB-like drive with it.
According to the instruction manual, you are supposed to lie on your bed while you use it, which makes sense, since all signals from your brain to your body are intercepted, including the ones to your muscles, you would collapse if you weren't lying down.
I plug the NerveGear in and put the SAO game into its slot, leaving the NerveGear ready for use for tomorrow.
I 'feel'—something I am able to do for mysterious reasons—someone entering the house and walk out of my room, grabbing some grocery bags from mom and carrying them to the kitchen.
She carries the other bags into the kitchen and hugs me, giving me a kiss on the cheek.
I lie down on my bed and put on the helmet, my head pressing on the pressure sensor on the inside and activating it.
The visor over my face contains information like battery life and time, which was currently 12:59:50
10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Wait, aren't you supposed to say 'Link Start' to activate it? Um... I take off the helmet and pick up the manual and look. "For people with any sort of speech problems, a small button on the left side of the NerveGear will have the same effect as the voice command," read some text. I put the NerveGear back on and press the button.
Text saying "Please pat yourself all over your body to calibrate," appears on the visor and some sound which was presumably speech saying the same thing plays directly in my head.
On the visor is a diagram of what to do and I follow the instructions.
My vision turns white and a bunch of colorful cylinders fly by.
5 green circles appear one at a time, moving to the side saying "Vision," "Hearing," "Touch," "Smell," "Taste."
Then, I appear in a black expanse with nothing but a 'holographic' interface asking me to enter a username as well as a keyboard and a pair of hands which moved when I tried to move my hands, but the hands were semi-transparent 50% gray, matching my own only in size.
I enter "Angel," and press enter.
The panel vanishes and 'I' appear floating in front of me with some options to edit the avatar. I make myself look about 3-4 years older, change my hair color to black from white, and darken my skin color, leaving my eyes their strange, natural silver color. Then I choose black as the secondary color for the starter gear and white as the primary.
I press confirm and a menu asking me to pick a starting weapon appears. I select a one-handed longsword and my sight is filled with a bright light, once the light clears, I am standing in a large plaza. Around me are bunch of people who I can hear, presumably talking. I move my eyes and see that the HUD showed things like HP, level, name, time, and a small compass. According to the compass I was facing north. I see some players heading north and very few players heading west or east, with nobody heading south because there's a wall there.
I guess they're probably beta testers since they aren't too busy being dumbstruck to go. As much as I want to get away from other players and just listen, there's probably some reason everyone is going north. Well, given that Aincrad is circular and the Starting City is on the south edge, it makes perfect sense, actually. I walk along the northward road—not without stumbling a few times and regretting making my avatar so much taller than me—out of town and see an expansive plains with some blue boars and a few players.
One group of two had one teaching the other. Since the red-head was unable to pull off a sword skill, he probably didn't read the manual, because that very basic stuff was explained. I walk past them and onto an outcrop over a sheer drop and just lay down on my back, closing my eyes.
After lying around for around 15 minutes I get up and look around. The players I saw earlier were still around, but they hadn't cleared out all the boars in the area by a long shot, or maybe enemies respawned really fast in this area so new players can level up. I go into my menu and look at the positions for the basic sword skills. After memorizing the positions for the basic longsword skills, [Vertical], [Inverted Vertical], [Horizontal], and [Slant], I approach a lone boar near me.
It notices me and charges at me with a snort. I meet its charge with a [Vertical] and the sword cleaves through the boar's head, revealing a white lattice on red on the wound. The HP bar next to it which reads [Frenzy Boar] above it quickly empties, turning from green to yellow to red smoothly. The boar's image blurred and it shattered into millions of blue polygons. I guess it was a 2D surface type shatter since the result seemed to be 2 dimensional. The sound that accompanied it was quite likely a sound similar to glass shattering, given what it looked like, but possibly it was something else entirely. I sheathe my sword.
A small window appeared informing me that I had giant some XP and col as well as some raw meat and hide.
From behind me a boar charges into and knocks me down, while it doesn't really hurt, it's still unpleasant and hurts my dignity. It also drains a good 30-40% of my HP.
It prepares to charge again but a rock surrounded by the blue light of a sword skill slams into the side of its head and it turns towards the thrower, the black haired boy who was teaching the red-head.
The boar charges at him and he easily kills it.
He says something but at this distance reading his lips is basically impossible for me. How do I say thanks? The only way I know to communicate with people in general is sign language or text, and I doubt he knows the former and the latter is not really available.
"You don't happen to know sign language?" I sign hopefully as they get closer, not actually expecting a 'yes.'
"Are you alright?" he signs after helping me up. Well that's awfully convenient, he actually does know sign language.
"Yeah, thanks," I reply.
The red-head started saying something and was promptly punched in the face by the other one. Whatever it was he was saying, I probably don't want to know.
"What's your name? I'm Kirito."
"Ak- Angel," I reply, almost introducing myself with my real name.
"And this guy here is Klein," he signs and then points to the red-head.
"Can you tell him I said, 'Nice to meet you?'" I request.
"Do you want to join us for a bit?" he asks.
I nod.
About 4 hours flew by in a flash and the 3 of us were sitting from the spot where I lay down earlier. It was only 5:30 but because it was in the winter the sun was already starting to set.
Kirito and Klein were talking about something, and then Klein started jumping around and trying to pull air off his head. Is he trying to pull the NerveGear off his head? Why, there's a logout button. It should be pretty obvious.
I open the menu and look where the logout button is supposed to be, instead there is a blank button. Alright, but it's still probably just some bug. Though then they would probably shut down the servers or something and force logout everyone, because something like this can't be good for PR. Strange. I expect someone would have tried and failed to logout by now and then contacted the GM. I mean, no matter how awesome this game is, someone would have had some reason to go, especially since a 1000 of the players have already played for a couple months.
I look back at the two of them and see that Klein is nearly pushing Kirito off the cliff and excitedly asking something. Then he is promptly kneed in the nuts and thrown backwards, whereupon he writhes in pain on the floor for a moment before realizing there was basically no pain.
Kirito starts saying something which seems to be, "Still, don't you think this is strange?"
Klein replies with something which I can't tell because he's facing away and before Kirito can answer, theres a loud repeated sound in the distance. After a few seconds I'm blinded by light and once it clears the three of us are standing in a plaza, with thousands of other players, most likely all of the other players.
Red elongated hexagons saying 'warning' and 'system announcement' tile the sky in a dome, then between the cracks a blood-like liquid starts to flow, but instead of hitting the ground it pools in the air and forms in a giant red robe, with no face, hands, or feet. Or probably any other body for that matter. A loud sound, presumably speech, comes from the figure. Text appears, presumably subtitles for what the figure is saying.
It introduces itself as Kayaba Akihiko, in other words, the creator of the NerveGear and SAO.
He then proceeded to explain how we were trapped in here and the only way out was to beat the 100th floor.
There is only one way for a player to escape now, you must clear the game.
Right now, you're gathered on Floor One, the lowest level of Aincrad.
If you can get through the dungeon and defeat the boss, you may advance to the next floor.
Defeat the boss on Floor 100, and you will clear the game.
No way. And we die in real life when we die? This is ridiculous! Mom, dad... I miss you. I felt tears at the corners of my eyes.
How long will it be before we make it out, if we even do. The beta players made it to floor 8 in two months, so it would take us over two years at the rate the beta players went, and there's no way it'll go that fast with the real death, even with ten times as many players!
At this point everyone was panicking.
Lastly, I have placed an item in each of your inventories, go ahead, take a look.
I almost don't want to. I open my inventory slowly and at the top—the newest item in the default sort mode—there is an item simply called [Hand Mirror]. I materialize the item and a simple rectangular mirror with rounded corners and a brown metal rim appears in my hand. Nothing seemed to be interesting about it, simply showing a reflection of my face.
A moment later there was a blinding light, blocking out sight of even my hands and when it cleared I felt... shorter?
I look in the mirror and am surprised to see a reflection of my real face instead of my avatar. I dropped my mirror in shock, idly noting that it did make about the same sound as the monster death sound, and then made the exact same sound when the shard blurred and shattered into blue polygons.
I look around and note that the person standing where Kirito was standing transformed into a pretty much normal looking 14 year old boy, though his gear hadn't changed. Wait... he looks familiar, oh right, that one classmate who tried to talk to me.
Klein had basically not changed at all. Well, at least we don't have to deal with not being the height we're used to. When Kirito looked at me he had a surprised look on his face and said something.
But it still doesn't help us get out of here... our current options are to A: wait for rescue somehow from outside or just from someone clearing the game, but if the guy was able to make this world, it's unlikely they'll be able to get us out of here from outside, and B: to try to level up and clear the game, playing it safe to avoid death. As much as I didn't want to, as much as I was scared, option B seemed like it would get us out of here faster, while option A might not at all. Well there was option C, which was effectively taking a support role for people taking option B.
It then actually got to me. Even if we went at the impossible rate that the beta players went at, we would be in here for two years. Two years. I wanna go home. I really wanna go home.
Kirito grabbed my wrist and pulled me through the crowd along with Klein, getting us out. He dragged us into a little alley and started speaking. Thankfully he was speaking slowly so he wouldn't need to translate in sign language for me.
He said that there was only a limited amount of spawns and resources and if we want to survive, we need to get stronger. He said he was heading to the next village to get a head start on leveling up and getting better gear. He offered both of us to come with him—or really, offered Klein and said he was going to offer me, since he didn't know I could read lips to a certain extent since I didn't bother telling him—and that he knew a safe way to get there even if we were still level 2 or 3, 2, well, I'm definitely going.
Klein on the other hand turned Kirito down, saying that he had friends he logged in with and he couldn't leave them behind, and Kirito couldn't take that make people there safely.
Kirito started signing and I replied, "I got all that, I can read lips to a certain extent, and you were talking slowly and clearly enough. I'm coming."
"Oh, all right. Let's go."
We ran almost straight there with a few breaks—needless to say, we were tired afterward—, avoiding almost all monster spawns and getting there with but a single fight in a little over two hours. Then we accepted a quest to get nice swords in the town, Horunka, which involved going in the forest and finding a special [Little Nepent]—a plant monster—which had a flower on its head. Well, we needed two. Kirito expressly warned me not to chop the fruits on the top of the ones with fruits apart because it summons all the nepents in the area.
And now we had just gotten our two flowers and there was a third one in sight when the person we had temporarily teamed up with—Coper—said, "I'm sorry," and then chopped the fruit on a nepent in half with a [Vertical]. Then he disappeared from sight.
Immediately flocks of nepents came to the spot. Some attacking us and others going where the boy who'd been working with us had just been. The obviously don't use sight, and I guess whatever he did only protects him from sight.
The first of the nepents reaches us and Kirito parries its blow, I follow up with severing the thinest point. Given that we couldn't communicate in combat beyond him calling out 'Angel'—which he had told me was how my username was said—as a warning, our teamwork was surprisingly good.
A few seconds later the sound of death could be heard, slightly different from the other times I've heard it, though when I look over, none of the nepents who had attacked the boy were dead, so that could only mean that he was the one who died.
Slash, retreat, turn around, block, switch, slash...
It took about 30 minutes to kill the nepents and by the end both of us were on less than a quarter HP.
We sit down, leaning on each other and just sit for a few minutes.
"Let's head back," Kirito signs.
"Okay. Why did he do that?" I ask.
"MPK, monster player killing, when you lure monsters to kill another player and then you take their stuff to avoid the system tagging you as a criminal, he assumed [Hiding] would hide him from the nepents, but they use smell not sight," Kirito explains.
Why? Why would he do that.
We head back to town, encountering no more nepents along the way thanks to having killed all the nepents in a several kilometer radius, and complete the quest, each getting an [Anneal Blade].
"I'm tired, you wanna go get an inn room for the night?" I ask.
"Sure," he signs unsurely with a slight blush.
"There's nothing wrong about two people our age sharing a room, even if we are of opposite gender, especially in a game rated for early teens. Besides, it's not like we're sleeping in the same bed," I sign, blushing when I realize what I had just said, despite rationalizing it. Technically speaking, I was planning to sleep in the same room as a classmate I had never really interacted with before who was of the opposite gender. This was a game rated for 13 year olds.
"Hey Angel?" Kirito asks.
I nod, unlike speech, signing took effort, like moving my hands, and I was comfortable.
"Are you Akiko?" he asks. Huh? Well, I guess I am pretty recognizable, so it's not that surprising he'd recognize me. On second thought, it would be surprising if he didn't.
I just nod. "Hey Kirito, why do you know sign language?" I ask.
He chuckles awkwardly and scratches the back of his neck, signing, "Well, actually it was to talk to you."
"Why would you learn sign language just to talk to a complete stranger?"
"Well... you looked lonely," he answers. I blush slightly for some inexplicable reason and cover my face with my blanket to hide it. I guess it's kinda true I'm a bit lonely...
After a moment I peek out again and ask, "Can you teach me to speak? Not right now, but I mean, it will be helpful since we'll probably be here for at least a couple years."
'Good night.'
I make an 'eh' face.
He nods and signs, "It means 'good night.'"
"Oh, good night, Kirito," I reply and curl up tightly in my blankets, closing my eyes.
"Your humming sounds very nice," Kirito comments, causing me to blush and look away.
"Still need to learn how to connect sounds and language though, that will take longer," I reply.
"Well you are learning to speak from nothing, even if you do already know the language it's still not a super easy task."
"Are we going grinding today?" I ask.
"I guess, we don't have much better to do, do we?" he replies.
You have a point there.
Well, we could go sightseeing, or do some part of the game that wasn't grinding. There must be some dungeons or something, all RPGs have side quests. Then again, most RPGs don't have such an ultimate, defined goal like clearing the 100 floors, even if they do have story lines... speaking of which, it was somewhat strange that SAO had zero storyline, there was backstory, but no storyline quests or anything.
"There's gotta be some dungeons or quests we can do to take a break from mindless grinding, right?" I ask.
"During the beta there were quite a few dungeons about the place, yes, we could go find one. They often have pretty good loot at the end. The only problem is that there is generally a boss between the players and the loot. While they're not all that difficult, it's still risky." Kirito explains.
"In most RPGs, dungeons have loot scattered throughout as well as nice loot at the end," I point out.
"I suppose, I guess we can go look for one if you want to take a break from grinding, the XP reward probably won't be too bad anyway if we manage to kill the boss," Kirito agrees slightly reluctantly.
"Do you know any from the beta?" I ask.
"There's one quite near here, actually, I'll take us there," Kirito answers.
I follow Kirito through the forest until we reach a worn down, horizontal cave that faded into darkness.
Kirito had a slightly surprised expression on his face, "It didn't look like this in the beta."
"Well, can't expect everything to be the same," I respond.
"True, there already were different things," he replies.
We walk into the cave cautiously with swords and torches out—yes, we carry torches around in case of needing them—since neither of us carried anything in our left hand we were both carrying torches just in case on of us loses theirs.
We walk for 15 minutes, sometimes seeing a bit of gold on the ground or other treasures. The cave was like some sort of maze, once we realized that, we started leaving individual copper coins worth 1 col in a trail to get back to exit.
There was moss and cobwebs on the walls and ceiling, as well as the floor in the former case.
I realize this is a totally completely random place to end the story but I want some feedback to see if anyone thinks this is good before I write a 10k word first chapter and then throw it away. Totally not because I want to write something else. Definitely not that at all.