A girl sat alone in her darkened room, only accompanied by the lights from her PC and lamp desk.

The sound of one of her favorites, Shimotsuki Haruka's "Re: Call" can be heard playing lightly, as if illuminating the room. On her desk lied a cup of her favorite black tea, along with a plate with a slice of cake on top of it. Her right hand moved to slice a part of it with a fork, before taking the smaller piece to put it in her mouth. The black tea followed suit as she sipped it from the cup, easing her throat.

Well, maybe not a good choice for snack in the middle of the night, but sorry for having a sweet tooth, okay?

It was early in the morning. Last night, she had skipped dinner with her family on the pretense of having a stomachache. Her father, being the worrywart he was, ordered the family butler to have her sent straight to her room. He also made arrangements to have her excused from the school tomorrow so that her uncle could accompany her to the nearby hospital after he was done with his work. Talk about convenient.

Silently, the girl furrowed her eyes as she moved her right hand, along with the mouse said hand gripped. Her left hand was locked into the usual W-A-S-D key, sometimes moved to press the three first number keys on the upper left side of the keyboard.

"The bomb has been planted."

Aarrgh, damn!

Now she was on a clock to defuse the bomb. Considering the list of her friendlies that have been killed, she couldn't make any rash moves, as among the three remaining terrorists left, at least one of them was holding an AWP, or Accuracy International AWP, a .338 caliber bolt-action sniper rifle that can one-shot literally anyone. She'd bet that the sniper guy would be stationed at her blind spot, the two mids would guard the bomb site while making sure that she wouldn't have the time to check her six.

Plus, she was alone.

Now, what to do? She absentmindedly asked her mind while said mind did its best to formulate a plan. At the rate this was going, there were two options: the first was to let go of this round, while keeping her equipment safe. It was one to three, she ran out of her HEs, and one of them had an AWP. Trying to rush B here was nothing short of a suicide. The second was to rush B. She still had her smoke grenade, so throw one in and take out the three all at once. She might have an idea on where the sniper guy was hiding, one that would allow him to have a clear line of sight of two entrances at once. So, the probabilities were small, but it wasn't zero altogether. Which means there was a chance that she would be succeed.

"Hmm…"

"Terrorists win," the game announced the winner of this round soon after the sound of the bomb exploded was heard.

"Aah," she whined while having another piece of the cake. "This is why I hate become a CT in de areas," she continued with her mouth full. "By the way, what time it is… Geh, I still have to wait for five more hours? Don't wannaaa…"

The girl slumped herself onto the chair as she took a break from all the gaming for a while.

Well, the main reason that she took all the trouble into making sure that she wouldn't have to go to school for tomorrow was a little bit different, though.

Sword Art Online.

She looked at her NerveGear, the helmet that turned dreams into reality.

It was the first MMORPG that used the term 'FullDive', using NerveGear. It means that players immersed themselves fully into the game, not just staring in front of their PC, but actually went in it, lived in it.

Sword Art Online itself was a real-time, melee-based MMORPG using level system with the setting as your usual, medieval-age-ish world. Real-time means that there was no time skip, each second counted and in order to get stronger in the game, you had to dive as much as you could. Melee-based means, well, ever played one of the Monster Hunter series? They were a fine example on how a melee-based game with no magic could be still successful. However, SAO took this to a whole new level by discarding completely the elemental attacks system used by MH, effectively making the fighting system reduced to only slashing and stuff.

During the beta, 1000 lucky players who were chosen from across the country had tried the game. Some of them had shared their experience on their personal blog. Many said that the graphics were really good that you could mistake one as something real had it not for the obvious HUD and "Immortal Object" notification. Many said that they felt alive, that every of their movement felt like it wasn't programmed (well, technically the device lets you to project the brain neurotransmitters used to move the parts of your body to project your movement in the game instead, but you got the point). She was one of those who actively followed for any reports from the game.

Later in the afternoon, the game would be officially launched. Hundreds of players were reported that they would line up in front of stores the first thing in the morning, with few had actually camped the night before, which means, this night. With the official launch date finally here after months of waiting, the hype was in the full swing. You think why she couldn't sleep even for a wink?

The girl smiled as she felt adrenaline back online. She could feel that blood flowing through her veins as she felt reinvigorated. Silently, she picked up her mouse before once again went for another round.

Soon, she would able to try that world. Her mind was racing wildly, thinking about the possibilities that she could try once she was in the game, from weapons, moves, skills, floor bosses. Even enjoying normal lives would be fun to try. She had heard that there were cooking systems in the game. She would like to try that.

After two more rounds, she closed the game she was playing and put her PC into sleep mode. She then went to her bed to take a short nap, but not before taking a glance at her own copy of the game, in which the front cover was a giant, floating fortress.

Yeah, she was really looking forward to this.

Chapter 1: A Whole New World

Author's Note: Test, test. This is Ravenala, the very same Ravenala which is the latin name of a genus from a certain palm tree. This is my second ongoing story (you can look up for the first one). As I wasn't following the LN up until the Alicization Beginning, and I don't play any of the games, there is much work to be done for research on the Aincrad arc, such as key events, floors that weren't in the anime, floors landscapes from the game, rare drops, and important information such as when our MC beat the 50th floor, he didn't actually equip the Elucidator straight away as he didn't have enough STR stats at the time, or the famous (or infamous?) q Secret Medicine of the Forest, which the +6 (later +8) Anneal Blade originated, or even the Nezuha event. Point of view will be from our girl for most of the time, sometimes alternating to Kazuto for key events or when necessary. Updates will be alternated between this and my other story ("A New Generation" needs a lot of dedication in order to churn out even one chapter, as there are more variables that need to be considered compared to this one). So yeah, that's it for my introduction. Enjoy! (And don't forget to leave a review)