Chapter 1.
The World of Swords.
"Bye." The door was closed as a boy of about 15 turned around and walked up the stairs of his house. He was of about average height with green eyes and medium length scruffy grey hair that was swept to his left. He was wearing a baggy grey shirt and a pair of jeans. He opened a door at the top of the stairs to reveal a fairly small room with grey walls and a dark wooden floor. At the end of the room opposite the door was a black desk with 3 monitors on it. Beneath this desk were two built in shelves. The top shelf had a black gaming console on it along with a bunch of games while the bottom had a black gaming PC with purple neons coming out of it. Near the monitors was a keyboard of a similar design and a black mouse on a black and purple mouse pad. On the left monitor was a list of games that were installed. The middle had a live stream with the countdown for the new VRMMORPG Sword Art Online that was opening its servers that day. On the last monitor was a desktop screen with a background of a group of anime characters. Next to the desk was a dark wooden bed with a light blue sheet, mattress and pillow. On top of the pillow was a grey helmet with the letters 'NVG' in the middle with the words 'NERVE GEAR' beneath it. Above the bed was a window with grey curtains that were drawn to. Across the room, next to the door, was a dark wooden wardrobe. The boy closed the door behind him as he walked over to his desk starting up a game from the list. His lights were already off as he grabbed a wire from the helmet and plugged it into his computer. He led down on his bed as he put the helmet on and then looked at the top right corner of the visor at a clock that read 12:59. He waited until the clock changed to 13:00 before closing his eyes and saying the words "Link Start!".
A series of coloured cylinders flew towards him in an empty white space until all he could see was white. Two blue circles filled his view and then flew off to the top right as another four blue circles did the same taking up all remaining space on the far right beneath the two at the top. The circles then changed to green as the 1st, 3rd and 5th went to right with the 2nd, 4th and 6th going to the left. A box then appeared asking for the username and password which were quickly typed in. Another screen then appeared asking if he wanted to use his avatar Shadow(M) from the beta. As yes was pressed it came up with a grey space with the words 'Welcome to Sword Art Online' in black. His view was then obscured again this time with electric blue shards flying towards him. He opened his eyes to find himself inside of a old looking city. He now had medium length black hair with dark purple eyes. He was wearing the basic armour with a light grey shirt underneath it. On his left side he had a sword that was currently sheathed. He looked around as flashes of blue came from all around caused by players logging in. He ran forward towards where the town gate was through the crowd of players looking at the equipment.
Once he reached the gate he stood against the wall outside and then waited. He lifted up his right hand putting his index finger and thumb together then pulling his hand downwards. This made a ringing sound as five white circles all with an image in them came down from where he had put his fingers. The first circle then turned orange as a inventory window opened up. He quickly checked through this window to see nothing there but his starting equipment before then pressing the third option on the subject menu to check his skills. "Just as I expected." He muttered to himself before he heard the voice of another player near him.
"Hi Shadow." Said the player as he walked up to the jet haired boy leant against the wall. Shadow turned to look at this player. He was about the same height as Shadow and had slightly shorter but scruffier white hair. He had light purple eyes and had a light blue shirt beneath his default armour. On his back was the same basic starting sword as Shadow.
"Good to see you again Wraith." Shadow replied, addressing the white haired player next to him. "It's been a while hasn't it."
"Yeah it has. We haven't been able to play for about 2 months now."
"Has it really only been 2 months since we were last here?" Shadow asked looking at his menu. "It seems like forever ago since the servers closed."
"But now they're open again for good." Wraith replied looking around him. "Man does it feel good to be back here."
"I know the feeling. I haven't even touched Full Dive after the Beta ended. There just wasn't any point in using the Nerve Gear until this finally launched."
"So…" Wraith said looking back to Shadow. "Were the rumours true?"
"Unfortunately no. As expected we got completely reset and we've got nothing else given to us for participating in the Beta or at least not from what I can see so far." Shadow replied selecting the third circle on his menu to open up the communications window and then pressing the first option in the sub menu before selecting Wraith from the list of nearby people and then sending him a friend request. "Anyway we should probably get going to the first town before all the grinding spots are taken."
"Yeah we probably should leave now." Wraith responded as a small white box opened in front of him with a friend request from Shadow. He pressed the blue circle to accept the request before then opening his menu and accessing the party sub menu to create a party that he added Shadow into. Shadow quickly accepted this and then the two players set off towards the next town. As they walked off Shadow noticed two other players exiting the town's gate whilst talking to each other. The first was a male player who appeared to be about 16. He had short blue hair and bright red eyes with a blue shirt under his starting gear and the basic sword on his back. Walking with him was a female player of about the same age. She had long red hair with black eyes and had a red shirt beneath her starting outfit along with the basic sword at her side. The red haired player looked over to Shadow and Wraith and then called out to them.
"Hey you two!" She shouted grabbing the leaving party's attention. "You want to party up with us!"
"What do you think Shadow?" Wraith asked turning to his friend. "Should we join those guys?"
"I don't see why not." He said to Wraith. "After all it may be better to have a few extra players to grind with us for a bit." They walked on over to the two players as the girl started speaking.
"Thanks for deciding to party up with us guys." She said. "We were hoping to find some people who might know what they were doing so we headed out and found you two"
"Well you definitely found the right people for that." Wraith said. " I'm Wraith and he's Shadow. We were both part of the Beta Test and two of the highest leveled players by the end of it." He said pointing to Shadow as he spoke. "And you two are?"
"I'm Crimson and this is Azure" the redhead said gesturing to the Blue haired teen next to her."We've never been in VRMMORPG before."
"It's pretty amazing isn't it." Shadow said. "The feel of moving your avatar as if it's your real body."
"That it is." Crimson replied as the group started walking away from the town. "I can only imagine how great it would feel to actually fight like this."
"We could try to explain it to you guys but you'll only truly understand once you get into battle." Wraith said opening his menu sending party invites to both Crimson and Azure. The two both accepted the invite adding their names underneath Wraith and Shadow's in the top left of their peripheral vision. As they continued walking a group of boars spawned in front of them.
"Right then." Shadow said unsheathing his sword from his side. "Time for us to start teaching you two how to play." He said putting his sword out and charging it up with a blue glow as he performed a Sword Skill called Rage Spike slicing into and through the closest boar.
"Was he always like this back in the Beta?" Crimson asked Wraith as they all unsheathed their swords and ran towards the group of boars that Shadow was currently killing.
"Yeah. Whenever we got to a boss room Shadow was always the first through the door and straight to fighting the boss."
"Wouldn't that of got him killed a lot?" She asked slashing at the closest boar.
"Not really. Before he got too low the rest of us were already helping him so in boss fights he didn't really die much."
"The rest of us?"
"Yeah we had a few other friends in the beta but after the beta ended me and Shadow were the only ones to agree to meet when the full game launched. I remember a player from the Beta who helped us as an Info Broker called Argo but apart from that I don't remember the rest of them much."
"Okay."
"Anyway." Wraith said as he finished of the boars around him. "Time to teach you guys how to use Sword Skills. Shadow!" He shouted to his black haired friend currently killing his final few boars. "Leave two of them for these two to learn their Sword Skills on!"
"Okay man." Shadow replied finishing off one last boar leaving two left for Crimson and Azure.
"Right so to perform a Sword Skill you have to make the starting movement of the skill and then let the automated system take you through the rest of the move."
"For example." Shadow said walking over to the group and interrupting Wraith. "To perform the Sword Skill Rage Spike you have to lift your sword up to your head and then go to jab forward then the system should carry you through from there. Like this." Shadow lifted his sword up to about level with his head then let it glow a bright blue before then jabbing forward as the system then carried him through as his blade cut through the air. "Now you two try to use it on those boars left over there." Shadow said pointing back over to the boars that he left for them. Azure was the first to step forward towards the boars. He lifted his arm up to be level with his head and let his blade glow before dashing forward with a brilliant blue flash slicing through the boar as it exploded into light blue shards.
"I could get used to this." Azure said sheathing his sword on his back as he walked back to the others.
"Okay Crimson now your turn." Wraith said as Crimson ran over to the final boar as she lifted her arm up letting her blade glow before dashing forward through the boar exploding like the other boars before it into tiny blue shards.
The afternoon went by as the group continued to level from the boars and before long the sun started to set. As it approached around about 5:15PM the group ended their grinding and sat down together on the grass nearby.
"So you guys enjoying this game then?" Shadow asked Crimson and Azure opening up his menu to check his items from the last 4 hours worth of grinding.
"Yeah it's definitely a great sensation to fight with your body as opposed to a controller." Crimson said turning to look at Shadow.
"That it definitely is." Said Azure turning away from the group and looking around at the rivers and hilly grasslands around them. "It's hard to believe that all of this is just data. I mean it seems so real yet it's all just a bunch of code."
"I know. You can really get lost in this game sometimes and completely forget about reality." Wraith said staring off into the distance like Azure.
"I remember a time from the beta where I stayed logged in for an entire weekend because I had got so immersed into this world." Said Shadow, closing his menu and standing up. "I only ended up logging out after Wraith here reminded me by telling me he was going to go have dinner with his family."
"Talking of which I should probably log out now." Azure said, starting to stand up as he looked at the top right of his peripheral vision to see the time reading 5:24. "It's almost half 5 and I have to go get myself some food so I don't starve in here."
"Yeah. It's a shame eating here only seems to satisfy your hunger whereas in reality you still need to actually eat." Shadow said walking forwards a bit and looking towards the stone wall he could see in the distance marking the edge of the starting town 'The Town of Beginnings'.
"Anyway if Azure's logging out I should probably log out too." Crimson said standing up and opening up her menu. "Thanks for helping us out guys."
"No problem." Said Wraith as he started to get up. "Just message us if you ever need any help."
"You got it." Azure said as both him and Crimson opened up their menus and went to log out.
"Um guys?" Crimson asked turning back to Shadow and Wraith who were just starting to turn away. "Where's the Logout button?"
"It should be at the bottom of your menu in the options tab." Wraith said opening up his menu and pressing the gear icon at the bottom of the list to open up the side menu. "It's right here…" Wraith's voice trailed off as he looked at the box for the logout button.
"What's wrong Wraith?" Shadow asked opening his menu and going down to the logout button to see why Wraith had just frozen. "Shit."
Where the logout button should have been was a blank box in between the help and the settings tab. Shadow tried to press the button but it had no effect whatsoever. Before anyone could say anything the clock in the top right of their view hit 17:30 and was then met by a loud ringing of a bell. Each of the four members of the group was then enveloped in a bright blue light before being blinded as a strange tingling feeling hit them all.