Disclaimer: I do not own Sword art online, any of it's characters. Or events. Any reference to real life people is strictly coincidental.
Caelen and I were both so excited to get the newest game to the market Sword Art Online. Apparently the game allowed you to use the NervGear VR headset to actually be in the game. Well 2 gamers like ourselves couldn't resist a call like that so I sat in line for 3 days to pick up 2 or 10,000 hard copies. So you can bet your ass as soon as I got to her house that night on halloween we weren't handing out candy or trick-or-treating, we were logging into the most amazing adventure of our lives. We logged into the game, set up our accounts, ad created our avatars on the desktop, put on our NerveGear and then it was time. "LINK START!" We said simultaneously. Time to play.
As The world around me changed, and I could see all kinds of different lights and sounds whizzing past me all of a sudden everything stopped and I was in the middle of a town square, in front of a sign that said the town of beginnings. After a second passed by I saw a blue light in front of me and then Caelen appeared in it's place. She was wearing black pants and a black shirt with a deep dark purple hooded cape over top of it. I looked down into a fountain nearby and say my dark hair had spiked and I was wearing an all black outfit with orange trim and a dark black hooded cape with orange trim. We both looked at eachother and said "Awesome!" laughing as we said it. "Let's look around this town, use a little bit of our starter money and see what kind of swords we can pick up, I'm dying to get out there." I told her. "Ok, I'ma head over there and look you go that way and we'll meet back here in 30 min, deal?" she said. "Deal, I responded"
I let Caelen go off on her own as I walked down the road ad looked in the little town shops for any promising weapons, that we could use to level relatively quickly. The 2 of us were determined to be 2 of the best players on our server, hell the whole game if we could. As I was walking down the road I noticed a shop with a cpl smaller 1 handed swords and the had 1 2 handed sword that had surprisingly high speed stats for a greatsword. I picked up the greatsword for myself and a couple 1 handed swords just in case of emergency. Across the street was a crystal store. I grabbed some teleport crystals and healing crystals just for good measure.
As agreed we met back up by the sign as agreed and compared our findings. She had gotten just about the same as me except she had chose a long thin unguarded sword and kept throwing knifes in her belt. "Good pics sis" I told her. "Thanks, let's go out in the field and pick up some xp real quick. Im itching to go." she replied.
We quickly hit the field and began taking out the local low-level creatures which consisted mostly of what the game called "frenzied boars".Before long we maxed out leveling on what we could easily do in this area, as we got higher it took more xp that the boars simply couldn't offer. At this point we were about 5 or 6 hours into playing. We had both learned the basics of the game and had earned a few sword skills for our hard work. "Hey Cae" I yelled across the field, "wanna head back to town to resupply and see if we can find some maps?" "Sure just lemme…", but before She could finish her sentence She disappeared in a flash of blue light. Before I could even react the same thing was happening to me. Befor I knew it I was back in the town square That I we had started in and people were appearing all around me. I quickly looked and saw caelen across the square and ran over to her. "Whats going on?" I asked her. "Idk… opening ceremonies?" she shrugged back.
After about a minute and a half of staring around and seeing everyone acting extremely confused I looked up and saw the sky turning red With a warning message being being displayed over and over. After a couple seconds a dark red ooze started oozing out of the sky around the message. The ooze formed together and generated a large robed figure resembling that of the game master silhouette. "Wonder who that is" I asked Caelen. She replied, "I think we're about to find out".
As soon as she said that the character began to speak. "Attention players i welcome you to my world my name is Akihiko kayaba and as of this moment i am in control of this world. I'm sure most of you have already noticed an item missing from your main menus, the logout button, I assure you this is not a defect of the game. I repeat this is not a defect." Caelen and I hadn't tried logging out yet, but surprised and a little worried by this remark I immediately opened my menu and Checked. He was right… no logout button. He continued on, "This is how sword art online was designed to be. You cannot log yourselves out of sao and no one outside will be able to shut down or remove the NerveGear from your head. If anyone attempts to do so a transmitter inside the NervGear will transmit a microwave signal into your skull destroying your brain and ending your life." I looked at caelen and saw the look of astonishment on her face as she registered the same thing I was thinking… We're stuck here… I looked back up at our developer wondering what else he could have to say. "Despite my warning the families and friends of some of the players have attempted removing the NervGear. An unfortunate decision to say the least as a result the game now has 213 less players than when it began. They've been deleted from both Aincrad and the real world. As you can see, international media outlets have round the clock coverage of everything including the deaths. At this point it is safe to assume the the chance of a nerve gear being removed is minimal at best." Well that's good. At least I won't be killed by my parents own stupidity." I hope this brings you a little comfort as you attempt to clear the game. It is important you remember the following: there is no longer any way to revive someone within the game. If your hp drops to zero your avatar will be deleted from the system forever and the nerve gear will simultaneously destroy your brain. There's only one way for a player to escape now. You must clear the game right now you are gathered on floor 1 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." That seemed easy enough Caelen and I were great gamers. I'm sure we could clear the game.
I was about to take Caelen's hand and start working our way out of the circle when I heard Akihiko speak again, "Last but not least i've placed a little present in the item storage of every player. Please have a look." So naturally I look in my inventory, and caelen does the same. It's a mirror. I open it up and am immediately engulfed in a Blue light. It dissipates very quickly. As I look around, I see everyone also coming out of a blue light, but something's different. "JAKOB!" I heard caelen scream. I look over and see Caelen standing there but instead of her avatar standing there, It's her. The same her that I've looked at every day for years. "What?" I ask, "what's wrong?" "You look… like you…" she said." "so do you" I responded. "Everyone must have been replaced by replicas of their real life bodies. Then akihiko started speaking "Right now you are probably wondering why. Why would akihiko kayaba developer of sword art online and nerve gear do this. Ultimately my goal was a simple one. The reason i created sword art online was to control the fate of a world of my design. As you can see I have achieved my goal. This marks the end of the tutorial and the official launch of sword art online. Players I wish you luck."
"Well fuck" I told Caelen, " We're missing marching band because some asshole wants to play God"