Sword Art Online: Back to Ones and Zero

by Latin Ramen

"Sometimes one can only see the futility of their own actions in hindsight". Looking back on his own struggles, all he can see is pointless suffering. This is the story of a boy, not a hero. A boy who has long since stopped fighting. Not all tales have happy endings, and in a game that traps 10,000 players in a fight for their lives, many are bound to end up with a "Game Over".

1. Chapter 1

0 Years: 0 Days: 0 Hours: 0 Minutes: 0 Seconds Remaining

"Start from the beginning."

It's a very valid argument. Starting from the beginning leaves no one in the dark. It means that everyone, sometimes literally, starts on the same page. However, I would like to refute that point using a few of my own. To begin, how exactly does one define the beginning. A human is the accumulation of their experiences. Every action we make is dependent on the past. In fact, the present is a result of a practically infinite number of coincidences. It makes you wonder why people think that nothing they do matters. One would think that a single choice could divert the flow of time. I think I may have figured it out though; sometimes one can only see the futility of their own actions in hindsight.

I looked down at my stomach. This time I knew that the injection had truly entered my bloodstream. I would be lying if I didn't say that my life flashed before my eyes. It seemed fitting that my situation that had started with a sick twisted cliché would also end with one. Looking back, all I saw was futile struggling. In the end, though, I couldn't hope to escape the shadows of my past. The nightmare that had continued to haunt me for four years since it started was finally going to be the end of me.

The weakness I felt in my knees finally took over and I collapsed. The drug was doing its work quickly. I thank whatever higher power that was still listening to me that at least my end should be relatively painless. Looking around with my gradually fading vision I saw two figures. One with chestnut brown hair and hazel eyes was looking down at me. She was both the object of my admiration and the cause of my suffering. Just as I had expected, I could sense no remorse in her stare. I suppose that in the end that was only fair.

I turned my attention to the man lying on the ground a few feet in front of me. He too had a wound on his stomach, though while my injury was seemingly invisible, blood was flowing from his. In his hand, he held a needleless syringe, the same one that had injected a lethal dose of succinylcholine into my blood. Likewise, in my hand was the weapon that had put a hole in his stomach. It had been far from the climactic battle my life had been building up to. Even so, knowing that in the end, I may have been able to pay back some of the pain gave me a small amount of satisfaction. The expectations forced onto me by my friends. The pain and hatred forced onto me by my enemies. That possibly even after all my pointless struggling I was able to return some of the pain of my tormentors. With that thought, I curled into the fetal position and waited to die.

The brown-haired girl stood looking at the scene in front of her. She despised the two figures lying on the ground in front of her. Why was it then that she found tears in her eyes and an intense sadness in her soul? She stood staring at the scene before her for the longest time. For the first time in her life, she found herself unable to act. Being able to act was act was always one of her strong suits, but at this moment she had absolutely no idea what to do.

She noticed a stark difference between the two laying in front of her. The man that lay furthest from her struggled desperately. He gripped the hole in his stomach with a bunched-up portion of his shirt trying to slow the bleeding. Every ounce of his mind seemed to be devoted to holding on to life. However, the boy in front of her merely curled up in defeat. Despite the deadly toxin running through his body, he seemed relaxed. He seemed to have given in. All of his actions seemed to accept the inevitable.

She didn't know how long she had been standing still before the police and an ambulance arrived. The paramedics rushed to the two figures on the concrete, doing what they could to save the two. Shortly after, a paramedic ran up to her.

"Were you the one who called 911?"

She was, she realized after a moment, and nodded.

"Did you know either of the victims?

For some reason, she felt angry. Only one of them was really a victim. But, both of them got what they deserved, didn't they? Her brain was telling her two different things. In the end, all she could do was nod.

"Do you know what happened?"

She pointed to the black-haired boy, "The man with white hair is named Kanamoto Atsushi. The other one is named Kazuto Kirigaya. Atsushi injected him with succinylcholine and he tried to defend himself with his umbrella."

Upon hearing this the paramedic immediately shouted to her companions. She turned back to the girl.

"It seems like you two were close, would you like to ride in the ambulance with him."

They weren't close, was what one side of her said, but the silent tears that were streaming down her face said otherwise. In the end, she found herself riding beside the black-haired boy looking as the paramedics desperately tried to save the boy from cardiac arrest. Watching this desperate struggle, she felt the veil that hung over her mind finally unravel. Everything in her mind finally started fitting into place.

"Kirito", the girl named Asuna whispered.

The EKG monitor flatlined. Asuna starred in horrified silence at the final moments of the struggle the boy named Kirito had long since given up on.

Thus, we rewind to the day one boy's struggle started, 3 years, 236 days, 9 hours, 36 minutes and 18 seconds ago.

3 Years: 236 Day: 9 Hours: 36 Minutes: 18 Seconds Remaining

As had become typical lately, my room was bathed in a relative darkness. Although some light still seeped in from the cracks in my window shade, the general mood in my room remained the same: an empty grey. Against the back wall, my computer displayed an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) stream I was only half listening to. At the same time, I sat on my bed absentmindedly thumbing through a magazine article about the video game designer, Kayaba Akihiko who had just recently stepped into the limelight. I usually gave myself several things to focus on so that when my attention drifted I could narrow in on something else. Today, however, all of my attention was aligned with the rest of the gaming community. It was November 6th, 2022, the day the community had been holding its breath for since May. Ever since the closed beta of Sword Art Online.

Sword Art Online was the first virtual reality massively-multiplayer online game, or VRMMO as the small subgenre had been coined. The game was the first of its type, developed for the high-tech system of NerveGear. Both the software and the hardware were Kayaba's brainchildren. Starting in 2016 he had begun work with a group of neuroscientists to map out the brain's neural responses and create a machine that could directly interface with it. Although many uses for the team's revolutionary work were being explored, the first to be completed, was the NerveGear, built specifically for gaming, obvious considering Akihiko's background in video games. The tech rendered a virtual world by reading and sending the nerve impulses associated with sensory information. It also allowed the player to directly control their avatar by interrupting the nerve impulses responsible for movement and translating them into the virtual world.

At first, the only launch titles were mostly simulations, ported games and a handful of originals with very limited worlds. Although it was enough material to satisfy the community for a while, I came away with a fairly disappointed feeling at the wasted graphical potential and the games in general. That was until Sword Art Online, Akihiko's magnum opus.

Although there were rumors about the project far in advance it wasn't officially announced until last summer. It would consist of a huge overworld with a variety of terrains, monsters, and places to explore, all of which you got to experience firsthand.

Last May marked the closed beta. A thousand players were selected by raffle to participate in the month-long beta. I was one of the lucky few accepted. Now five months later I had a guaranteed spot in the very limited initial launch while the rest of the world scrambled for the remaining nine thousand spots. The number of players allowed on the server would be slowly incremented as the dev team tested how much strain large populations of players would put on the servers. From what I had heard some people had to camp out for three days to be far enough up in line to get one of the physical copies and the number of people on the waiting list was already beyond one hundred thousand. Now on the first Saturday of November, the official release was only an hour away.

I was pulled back to Earth by a distant voice.

"I'm off to practice!" the feminine voice shouted.

Slowly, I put the magazine down and rose from my bed. I walked over to my window and pulled open a small crack in the curtains so I could look out. My sister Suguha was jogging out the front gate with a duffle bag over her shoulder.

"She's still at it", I quietly whispered.

I barely talked to or saw my sister much anymore. Granted that was mostly my problem, but I could barely look her in the eye anymore. For that matter, I could barely look anyone in the eye anymore.

At that moment I noticed that I was starting to stink. Might as well clean up, I thought. I still had another half an hour and considering how much I would most likely be playing in the near future it was probably best to get it out of the way.

I entered the bathroom and began to undress. After turning on the water I glanced at myself in the mirror. I was overly thin and bony, to the point where my ribs were showing and my cheeks looked very hollow. I hadn't ever been a very good eater, especially as of the late. Although I'd never had much meat on my bones I knew that I was currently very underweight. I sighed, not for the first time and began my shower.

After washing and redressing I returned to my room, back into its characteristic darkness. Glancing momentarily at the clock, I noticed I only had a few more minutes before the server open and Sword Art Online, or SAO as most called it, officially launched. I walked over to my mostly bare bookshelf and pulled off the NerveGear.

The NerveGear was a grey helmet of sorts that extended down to the nape. Additionally, it had a strap meant to go under the chin for keeping the helmet secure. I plugged the device in and sat down on my bed. I adorned the helmet once again feeling a sense of exhilaration and rested my head on my pillow. I closed my eyes and softly spoke the nostalgic command, "Link, Start".

A barrage of colors flashed through my vision along with several other bits of sensory information. A screen confirmed that all sensory components were working properly. The screen faded into a game selection screen, which, like the menus in the game, I could navigate either through a series of gestures or just by thinking or saying the proper commands. From there I selected SAO and my field of vision faded to black. A prompt on my screen read, An existing character profile has been found. Would you like to continue using it? Considering that I had rather liked my original avatar I selected yes. The screen faded to white and a large message appeared on my screen, Welcome to Sword Art Online.

I watched as the cutting technology rendered the starting city of SAO. First the cobblestone streets then the buildings with tiled roofs and finally the sky and ceiling of the floor above. The world of Aincrad was a roughly conical 100-floor castle, each floor containing new types of terrain and obstacles. The first floor alone was 10 km across and the spawn city took up nearly twenty percent of its surface. Each floor opened up on the perimeter to the cloudy void below the castle. Just for fun, I had jumped off during the beta to see what free falling felt like. It was liberating, in a way, watching as I approached the clouds.

Bringing my attention to my surroundings I took in the nostalgic Town of Beginnings. Facing in front of me stood the Black Iron Palace, a giant black castle that had held the Chamber of Resurrection, the respawn point in the event of a player's death. The palace was the farthest north point on the first floor and its unfinished moat spilled into the void. In the back, there was an observation deck that was a great place to appreciate the state-of-the-art virtual reality of Sword Art Online.

Additionally, the palace also held a prison. Due to the increase in player freedom a Moral Infraction Code was put into place. Violators would be sent to the prison as a temporary punishment with ban possible for continued infractions. This, of course, happened far more often than most people would like to admit, but I was one the few who, at the very least, had enough sense not to take advantage of the virtual environment (that does not include you TommyBoi420).

I took a look at the mirrors placed on either edge of the spawn area so players could admire their new looks. My avatar looked very dissimilar to my real body. The only similarities were my black hair and the height of the avatar, due to the fact that it was harder to play with an avatar that was of a different height than your real body. Symptoms of not using your proper height include; tripping over yourself (or directly into a spike trap if you're Tom) and sudden bouts of clumsiness. Beside that my avatar was completely different. Although my avatar is still somewhat lean, it's much more well-built that I was. As well as this my features had been altered to look handsome in ways only CGI could make them. Above my head was a tag stating the name I chose to be known by in this world, Kirito.

Satisfied with my new look, I turned around and charged out of the plaza and onto one of the main streets that spread out like a spider web from the plaza. I had sunk so much time into SAO beta that I knew the first ten floors or so like the back of my hand. I was heading to a weapons vendor that I remembered selling one of my favorite early game swords and as I wove through the streets and corridors, I genuinely smiled for what seemed like the first time in months.

3 Years: 236 Day: 5 Hours: 6 Minutes: 18 Seconds Remaining

It was now 5:30 and so far, I had spent four and a half hours inside SAO. I had spent the entire day alone, reacclimating to my virtual body until my movements were almost as refined as they were during the beta. The feeling of using the sword skills, system guided movements that helped a player attack or use close to any weapon for any purpose, even if they had never touched a sword in real life, was just as exhilarating as I remembered it (especially without TommyBoi following me. I may have no friends but that doesn't mean I have no standards.).

I currently lay on the ground observing the sunset over the terrain of Aincrad. To my left was the Town of Beginnings and to my right were the first two clearable areas. A lake region and dense forest region, both of them offered interesting beginners challenges.

It had been a good first day but I knew that I would soon need to log out and have dinner. However, it had been so long since I had felt so good, so I was content watching the beautiful computer-generated landscape for a little longer.

I had avoiding people for the past few hours, but I expected I would run into someone from the beta test sooner or later. Although I didn't have any real friends, I did know a handful of people from the beta test. Even if it was online, I was hoping I could finally break out of my shell a bit.

I sighed thinking about what was to come in the coming months. The game I had been waiting months for had finally been released, and I would once again be able to experience living as swordsman once again. During the beta test, SAO was the only thing on my mind and it had given me something I could look forward to through the drudgery of my life.

Realizing it was about time to log out I opened the menu and navigated to the logout button. Or at least where I thought the logout button was. The slot on my allowed a player to log had in the beta test was completely blank. I spent the next few minutes navigating through the menus trying to find it. I started to get worried after I couldn't find it five minutes later. Switching tactics, I both spoke and thought the logout command, neither of which worked.

I sighed assuming that it was just a first-day bug. The game masters are probably freaking out right now, I thought. From there I sent a message to the GM explaining the issue. Satisfied for the time being I went back to observing my surroundings. Then in the distance, I heard the clock tower bell back in the town of beginnings. However, the bell sounded different than usual. It rang slightly out of tune which gave the bell an eerie effect. After the bell, I noticed that the usual ambient noises around me had gone silent.

At first, I thought I was imagining things until a particle effect appeared around me. A forced teleport? I thought. Before long I appeared in the plaza of the Town of Beginnings. Around me the plaza filled with other players. It appeared as though someone had forced a teleport of all players to the central plaza. Confused for a moment, I noticed something in the sky. A message outlined in red read, System Announcement. Oh, I thought, they're just gathering the players to explain the bug or to welcome everyone. I felt relief as the final few players were teleported into the game.

Then, the red surrounding the message expanded bathing the plaza in a red glow. My sense of worry slowly returned as a red liquid oozed from the dome and started to congeal into a humanoid figure. The behemoth of a figure appeared as an empty red cloak with gold trim. Although it hung in a way that made it look like it was being worn, only blackness could be seen under the hood or up the sleeves. White gloves hung in a similar fashion with nothing connecting them to the main body. After a moment a very calm and serene voice rang out from the hood.

"My name is Kayaba Akihiko and I would like to personally like to welcome you to Sword Art Online."

Kayaba Akihiko?! Why is the game developer is actually communicating with us, shouldn't it be the GM?

"I have called you here to make an announcement. As I'm sure many of you have noticed, the logout button is missing from the game's menu. I assure you, this is not a mistake, this is simply part of SAO's system."

The crowd was silent for a moment and then a barrage of murmuring started.

"What does he mean?"

"Is there another way to log out."

It only took a moment for him to clarify.

"In other words, you can no longer log out of your own free will."

This left the audience in silence.

"Not only can you no longer log out but I have made sure that the NerveGear will not be removed from the outside either. If someone attempts to remove, damage, or disrupt the functions of the NerveGear, I have calibrated it to send an electromagnetic pulse that will destroy your brain."

"He's joking."

"There's no way..."

The problem was that there was a way. The NerveGear did use microwaves to interface with the brain, but there was supposed to be a safety to keep them below dangerous levels. If the safety was disabled it was entirely possible. I turned my attention back to the figure in the sky.

"Although I have told the rest of the world of this condition. Many people still attempted to remove the NerveGear. This has so far resulted in the death of 216 people. I think it's fair to say the chance of the NerveGear being removed is quite low."

A series of articles were projected in front of Kayaba Akihiko. "216 Killed by the NerveGear" and "10,000 Stuck in Sword Art Online", were just a few of their titles.

This seemed to strike a chord among Kayaba's audience and a collective gasp was released.

"No..."

"216?!"

"To be clearer, disconnection from an outside source of electricity for ten minutes, being cut off from the system for more than two hours, or any attempt to: unlock, dismantle, or destroy the NerveGear will result in the destruction of your brain. This condition was put in place in the case of power outages and to give the outside world a chance to move your real bodies to hospitals."

The audience seemed to have lost all responsive capabilities. People were going into shock. No one could properly believe what they were hearing.

Kayaba continued, "There is one final condition to your imprisonment, if you perish within the game the NerveGear will simultaneously fry your brain."

"Wait, so if we die in the game…" someone said.

We die for real, I finished in my head. Then everyone around me finally snapped. A single high-pitched scream broke the silence and everyone went to madness.

"You can't do this!"

"You're insane!"

People around me collapsed. The plaza was filled with sounds of despair. Even I was starting to accept the implications. Everyone had a gun to their head. Anyone could leave this world and the real one at any moment, even me. I looked around and for the first time in a while, took in the faces of the people surrounding me.

"There is but one way to escape Sword Art Online. It is to defeat the boss on the one-hundredth floor of Aincrad. You need not worry about the world outside this one any longer, you can focus on playing the game"

This statement only amplified the reaction of the crowd.

"You expect us to play around?! In a situation like this?!"

"Release us! Let us go home!"

Kayaba continued to ignore all of these comments.

"With that, I would like to announce one more wrinkle. I have placed an item in your inventory. Please take a look."

Pleased to finally have something to do besides listen, I opened my inventory and selected the item Kayaba had placed there. As it generated in my hand I realized what it was. A small hand-held mirror. I watched in horror as my features suddenly started to change. The fullness of my face started to melt away and by the end, I was staring at the face I had always been trying to avoid. My real face. Looking down I noticed the clothes that had fit my frame so well earlier now hung loosely. I realized what had happened immediately. My avatar had been changed to mirror my real-world body. The NerveGear was capable of high-density scans of the head which most likely gave it all the information it needed to render our heads. As for our bodies, part of the NerveGear's setup had us pat our body down as a form of calibration. I assumed this had actually been used to find our real body appearances.

"As you can see I have wiped away the masks that online gaming gives you and revealed your true self."

Looking around I could see that most people's appearances had changed, sometimes drastically. In some cases, it was just the build and/or the face, but other time it was height, weight or even gender.

"This concludes your introduction. With that, I wish you all the best of luck and would like to reiterate what I said earlier. Welcome to Sword Art Online, my world."

The figure slowly vaporized into steam at the red dome covering the sky faded away. For a moment everything was still. Then the mass panic ensued full force. Players screamed. People collapsed. It affected everyone around me. I managed to block away my thoughts and squeeze through the crowd. Eventually, I reached the edge of the mob and I took off running. Through the streets and out of the Town of Beginnings. Across the now far more sinister grasslands of the first floor of Aincrad. But most of all, away from the 10,000 souls I was now trapped with.

3 Years: 233 Days: 23 Hours: 23 Minutes: 22 Seconds Remaining

I had arrived in Horunka Village shortly after sunset on the first day. A soft, gradually fading orange glow was cast over the town. The village was surrounded by trees and generally used as a hunting outpost, but one of the strongest swords on the first floor could be obtained there. With a little work, of course. Although it wasn't the strongest in terms of base stats, it could be upgraded far further than any other sword on the first floor, making it a viable weapon several floors beyond this one.

I walked with purpose to the edge of the village where I knew the quest for the sword could be initiated. My destination was a wooden cottage with a thatched roof. I knocked on the door and a middle-aged woman answered the door.

"I'm sorry, sir. I cannot take any work at the moment. My daughter, Agatha, is very ill and I must tend to her. Her condition is unique and can only be cured by medicine produced by rare carnivorous plants in the forest. They're both hard to kill and difficult to find so I have been unable to procure the medicine."

The woman looked down and tears started to well up in her eyes. I was once again astounded by how life-like the NerveGear could render this non-player character, or NPC for short.

"I'm sorry to hear that ma'am. If you need help I can get the medicine for you."

This was not how the quest was usually initiated. Normally, the woman would ask you to procure the medicine for her on her own. However, I was feeling extra sentimental that day.

"You would do that for me even without knowing my name?"

Despite being very lifelike the NPC's response was very cliched. Even the expression on her face looked as desperate as anyone would in her situation. I had to avert my eyes from her gaze.

"Yes."

"Thank you, good sir."

"I will repay you if you can procure the medicine for me."

A system prompt appeared asking, Accept the Secret Medicine of the Forest Quest? I quickly pressed the accept button.

Now, two days later, I was still hunting for the plant. Their spawn rate was ridiculously low to begin with and the influx of people who had reached the town and accepted the quest made it even more difficult to obtain the medicine. In the beta, only a handful of people were ever attempting the quest at once but considering the circumstances in the current situation, a large group of people were always trying to complete the quest. Only a handful had succeeded so far.

I was currently stalking my way through the forest looking for the plant and leveling up my stealth skill at the same time. Skills in SAO were leveled up by continual use of them, so in order to level up stealth, one had to make as little noise as possible. I had been stalking for several hours now and it was already dark outside. Although I had expected the quest to take another day to complete under these conditions, I finally found the plant after several more minutes of searching.

I snuck around back in order to get a stealth attack on the monster. Once I finally reached striking distance, I got into initial position for the one-handed sword skill "Horizontal" and activated the skill. I let the system carry me through the movement and struck the carnivorous plant on the area I knew to be its weak spot. Although the strike was successful it wasn't enough and I forced to retreat as the plant enter defense mode.

Viney, spiked tendrils were raised into the air. One of them struck out at me and I nimbly danced out of reach. At the time of its next attack, I dashed forward around the strike and activated another sword skill, once again hitting the weak spot. This time I wasn't quite fast enough in getting out of the way and I was nicked by the thorns on one of the tendrils. Although there was a pain absorber I could a dull throb from the area where I had been nicked. The carnivorous plant then shot out a stream of acid I was only able to dodge by rolling.

I continued the hit and run attack for a time gradually whittling its health down occasionally I got hit again, but I was too caught up in the battle to notice. Before long I had finally killed the plant. Using a glass vial, I collected some of the medicine and began working my way back to the village. Occasionally I had to deal with another creature but none were as challenging as the plant, so I managed to get back to the village without any problems.

I looked up at my health bar to see that roughly twenty-five percent of my health and been drained. It wasn't anything that couldn't be healed by resting, so I was unconcerned. After navigating to the cottage on the outskirts of town I knocked on the medicine woman's door. She appeared about a half a minute later.

"Did you obtain the medicine?", she said, looking desperate.

I nodded and handed her the vial.

"Thank you, here come in. I'm sure my Agatha will want to thank you."

The medicine woman brought me upstairs and I watched as she gave the medicine to her sick daughter. Her daughter appeared to be a little older than me and had reddish-brown hair. The medicine did it work quickly and I watched the life return the girl's face. The medicine woman hugged Agatha tightly as I watched from the sidelines. After a time, the pair came up to me and the medicine woman spoke.

"Agatha, this is Kirito. He brought the medicine."

"You have my thanks, but I must ask: why are you crying?"

It was true, I was crying.

"Oh, it, nothing...", I said quietly.

The medicine woman presented me with a sword.

"This sword has been passed down in my family for generations. I give it to you as thanks for saving my daughter's life."

I accepted the sword and was pleasantly surprised by how it was heavier than my current one. I offered my thanks and left the house before they could say another word. The tears that came down my face were heavier now as well. Watching the medicine woman had reminded me of a time when I helped my mother care for my sister Suguha. As children, the two of us had been inseparable. But in retrospect, those memories were all bittersweet. After all, Suguha wasn't even my real sister. I had been adopted by my aunt after my parents died and even looking back I couldn't help but feel alienated.

The tears continued to flow down my face as I ran back to the house where I was staying and I shunned myself, because, deep down, part of me was glad to be stuck in this game.