Sword Art Online is the property of Reki Kawahara.

None of these characters belong to me.

First Days

Diabel

November 6th, 2022, Sunday. Two months ago, the beta test ended and I had left this world behind. The world of «Sword Art Online» and the floating castle «Aincrad». Though I've changed since the beta, the «Starting City» hasn't changed a bit.

Or so I first thought. As I looked around and saw all the other players, I realized that it wasn't the same as it was before. The amount of people milling about made it a real city, it wasn't just a safe zone to hold players inside anymore.

After taking a deep breath, I ran towards the nearest weapon shop. I barely managed to reach the shop's counter when somebody suddenly called out to me.

Turning around, I saw a red haired man trying to flag me down. I thought it might have been an NPC, but the lack of an [NPC] above his head indicated otherwise. Perhaps it was a player that recognized me from the beta test? I changed both my avatar's name and appearance since then, so it wasn't a likely case. Curious, I decided to stop and hear him out.

"Hey, you look like you know what you're doing! Help a poor guy out, would ya?" He clasped his hands together as he pleaded.

I had no idea who he was, and I didn't particularly want to waste my time helping a stranger, so I ignored him and continued to run to a different shop instead. He didn't seem to take it badly, a quick glance behind saw him begging another player for help.

When I arrived at the next closest equipment vendor, the shop keeper suddenly called out to me. "Welcome, young man! I see you're off to an adventure?"

Just like older games, the NPCs would say short phrases, but they could also respond. It was possible to raise favor with NPCs if you visited them often and responded to them. Nodding my head, I answered with a short "Yes".

Nodding back in response, the old keeper continued with an unexpected pattern. "Here, take this sword with you, free of charge! You're my first customer, so I felt like giving you a gift. Just be sure to buy something else!"

When I was in the beta, such moments of fortune never came my way. Gratefully accepting the sword, I noticed it was also far better than the other swords in the store. Considering that, I waited to see if a question mark would appear above the shop keeper's head, indicating the start of a quest. A few minutes passed, nothing else out of the ordinary occurred.

I quickly bought a buckler to go with the sword, and when I finally made it past the north gate, I noticed there weren't many people out there. Perhaps they were standing awestruck as I once did, busily immersing themselves in Aincrad's full glory. Or maybe they were talking to all the beautiful 'girls' - in comparison to the beta there were far more female PCs, but the perfection of their appearances was just as unnerving as before.

Either way, there were multiple gates in and out of the city, so the lack of other people could easily be explained as having gone out of a different one.

You could run around absentmindedly in the grass lands just outside of the gate, the main mob - despite their name, «Frenzy Boar» was rather tame and wouldn't attack if you didn't target it. Even so, I watched another player getting gored by one of the blue boars, though they probably weren't a beta tester like me. The overeager player seemed to have forgotten to buy any weapons, and I chuckled as the player scrambled away on all fours.

At I ran further towards the edge of the grass lands, more threatening mobs appeared. There were all sorts of large bug-type monsters, but the most threatening of the mobs were the wolves. Unless your level was high enough they would always attack on sight, but they also had extremely low HP. A single «Sword Skill» could instantly kill one, as long as you hit their weakspot, their open mouths when they lunged at you.

As I split a wolf in half with a «Horizontal», I noticed that one of the drops was a blue hair dye. As far as the first floor went, it was a fairly rare item.

"Seems like I'm quite lucky today..." Smiling widely, I continued on towards a specific destination: the location of the quest which gave the «Anneal Blade» as a reward.

I didn't particularly like the Anneal Blade. I found it quite uncomfortable to use. But it sold at a high price, and the experience given from the quest wasn't too bad either.

With that in mind, I picked up pace, eager to get to today's target - Horunka village.

Notes: Now with a shamelessly copy pasted transition.