Alone in a Crowd

by The Lord of Silence

Eltelm is a German player who understands only a few words of Japanese or English. Not that he cared much when a started playing SAO. But when the game becomes a death trap, he'll have to care, as he becomes isolated by the language barrier. He may be a talented warrior, but even if his body survives can his mind live through becoming the Lonely Blade?

1. Foreword

Foreword

Okay then so, I've written one arc on this site so far (still ongoing) and I've really enjoyed the experience thus far, so I figure: why not do a second one? SAO is an anime I personally enjoyed watching a lot, though I did feel that it went downhill towards the end of season 1 with the Alfheim arc. I'm one of those people who would have preferred it if (spoiler alert) they'd gone all the way to Floor 100 rather than having Heathcliff's identity exposed and the game cut short at Floor 75. So of course that's what I'll be doing in my own story.

The concept for the story is that a player is trapped inside of SAO (of course) but can't communicate with anybody in the game. Why? Because he understands only a few words from either Japanese or English, which are the two primary languages spoken in the game. On top of that most of the in-game writing is in Japanese which makes things even more difficult for our hero. Be warned, if you have come here looking for a story where the main character gets an easy happy ending, prepare to be sorely disappointed. One of the big themes of this story is isolation, whether voluntary or involuntary so it does eventually get pretty gloomy. But don't worry, things will all (sort of) work out in the end. Maybe.

Anyway, I'm sure you're sick of reading my terrible Foreword, so please, click the next button and enjoy the story.

The Lord of Silence

PS Please excuse my terrible attempts at using German and Japanese words. In some cases characters are meant to be saying it wrong, but in others well, that's just because I don't actually speak the language very well myself and am using translation software for the most part. So if you do speak Japanese or German, feel free to point out any errors in a polite manner, and I'll see if I can fix them.