Here it is. The first chapter of my SAO fanfic. So as to not spoil anything, I'll be posting ANs at the bottom of every chapter to explain things that might not be obvious to everyone, or might be part of my own take on how things in SAO run smoothly. As this is an OC centered fanfic, please note that main characters will be showing up for interactions, and a few might end up having POV chapters about how they view and interact with my OCs. See you at the bottom!

Chapter 1: Prologue

My first time logging in to SAO started effortlessly. I had come here with two friends from the real world, and as we walked through the town looking for merchants we began chatting about the features of the game we liked so far. Only a few minutes after I had finished equipping my brand new longsword and basic armor, a forced teleport started, whisking everyone back to the main square where players had dropped into at login. I stared up at the rapidly expanding blood red hexagons with System Announcement written on them in bold black letters, and the sound of teleporting players was quickly replaced by scared murmurs and people shouting about events and jokes. But even that noise stopped when a substance reminiscent of blood began to leak from the hexagons across the sky, forming a hooded figure that started speaking in an ominous voice.

"I am Kayaba Akihiko, the creator or SAO and the sole person who can control this world. Many of you may have noticed the there is no longer a way to log out through the menu. This is not a bug, but rather a feature of the game itself."

The crowd erupted into outrage. We could no longer get out by ourselves. I could already predict the next words from Kayaba's mouth.

"In addition, if anyone on the outside attempts to log you out forcibly, the Nervegears you are wearing will transmit a microwave signal to your brain, killing you instantly. Several people on the outside have ignored this warning and as a result 127 of your comrades have been killed."

Another series of shouts rose from the crowd.

"There is also no longer any way to revive in the game. The cathedral stone will now have the username of every player in the game, and each one will be crossed of as the player dies. As an added feature, when your HP reaches 0, you will die in real life. This ends the tutorial for Sword Art Online. If you open your inventories, you will find a gift from me has been added to your items."

Kayaba ended his speech and faded back into the sky as the red hexagons started disappearing. I did as he had said, following the crowd around me, and pulled the hand mirror from my inventory. At once, the square began glowing and the players inside changed to show their real bodies.

I was the first in my group to speak. "…To remind us that death is real here." I murmured quietly. "Which means that from here on, levels and skills will mean everything."

Sayoko and Tetsuya nodded in silent agreement.

"The fields around town will be hunted dry within the week." Tetsuya whispered back.

"Between the three of us we should be able to make it to the next town even at level 1." Sayoko chimed in.

"If we want to leave, we should start now and be more careful than usual." I replied quickly.

We couldn't lose any time if we wanted to level quickly. I grabbed their hands to prevent us from getting separated in the crowd, then began rushing to the city gates. Once outside the gates, I drew my longsword and slowed down, keeping one eye on my surroundings as I opened the menu and looked at the semi-transparent map. I picked the shortest possible route and marked it, tracing over the path with my finger a few times to memorize at least a small portion of it. Every time we encountered an enemy I found my eyes wandering to the top left corner of my HUD, keeping an eye on the three green bars located there.

"Sonic Dash" I activated the basic sword skill and rushed forward, cutting into the side of a boar and killing it.

"Nice one Kou-kun!" Tetsuya shouted into my ear.

"Watch your own back Tetsu." Sayoko hit him lightly on the head before blocking the wolf charging at him with a lance to its nose.

"I could've blocked that!" He waved his shield angrily before receiving my foot in his back, knocking him out of the way of another wolf. For the first time in a few hours I watched as my green bar decreased, turning yellow and stopping about halfway down the gauge. I clicked my tongue and spun my sword, the light orange glow becoming brighter.

"Spiral Raid" My sword continued spinning, cutting into the wolf several times before I stopped the rotations with my other hand, bringing the sword back down with both hands at once and watching as the wolf burst into fragments of data.

"That was amazing. I need to get myself a longsword if that's a basic skill." Tetsuya shouted, placing his hammer and shield on his back and striking my shoulder with hard yet friendly force. I nodded slightly in response; absentmindedly staring at the window displaying the experience and Col I had gained. I laughed at the incredibly low amount.

"We're going to be doing a lot of grinding, aren't we?" Sayoko asked quietly. She glared at Tetsuya as he attempted to make a perverted joke, forcing his mouth to close instantly.

"Just keep in mind that this is a death game. No one grinds alone, understand?"

I was used to leading guilds in previous games, Tetsuya and Sayoko serving as my faithful sub-leaders under me, making the order sound like a normal conversation to them.

By the time the sun set we had made it to the next city and settled into the cheapest inn we could find. Once I was sure the others were asleep, I quietly snuck outside and left the town, keeping its walls within sight at all times. When I looked at the clock for the first time, four hours had passed.

"Only six in four, huh? Basing that off a gradual increase of 9%, I could hit 12 by morning." I muttered to myself as I waited for the nearby enemies to respawn.

I woke up under a tree, my sword still tightly clutched in my hand.

"Wake up moron. We've got some questions for you."

I felt the cold, flat steel of Tetsuya's hammer against my cheek and forced my eyes open, blinking in the bright light of morning. I instinctively looked at my health bar before glancing at the clock.

"It's only 8:30. Leave me alone…" I pouted at him, rolling over and closing my eyes before realizing where I was and what I had been doing before I fell asleep.

"You went out on your own last night, didn't you?" Sayoko was trying her best to keep calm, but she either wasn't trying hard or was angrier than I thought.

"Is it not a leader's role to be stronger than his guildmates?"

"Only if he doesn't die because he's a hypocrite!"

"Sooo… how many levels did you get last night?" Tetsuya asked, breaking the rising tension between Sayoko and myself.

"I'm almost to 15 after about 7 hours of continuous fighting." I smiled proudly at him and flashed a thumbs-up.

"You two are idiots." Sayoko said bluntly.

"We're also always the first two guild members to hit cap."

"That's because I'm always the healer."

"Then try to reach our level. We'll make it a bet and give you 50% of our Col if you can reach a higher level than me in a week."

"Deal. I'll make you guys so poor."

Tetsuya and I glanced at each other, smiling widely.

Well, that's the first chapter of awkwardly worded prologues finished. As promised, I'll be explaining things down here at the end of every chapter, this one included.

First off, character names. The SAO system is based off the Japanese language, so I decided to give the OCs Japanese names (plus I like how they sound anyway). I'll tell the character's full names as written (And in parenthesis I'll type the translation, separated into first and last by a comma). Please note that I'm putting the names into English format for the sake of readers who might not understand how Japanese names work. The main character is a young boy named Shinkou Raiousei (Death Light, Lightning King Star), and is age 18 upon logging into SAO. His long time childhood friend is Tetsuya Kurogane (Steel Sun, Black Iron) is also 18, and is dating the similarly aged third character, Sayoko Amegawa (Small Night Child, Rainy River), in real life. These three have been avid gamers since childhood, and for simplicity's sake, they made their usernames the katakana form of their first names.

Second, grinding terms. I myself am a gamer who is used to people automatically knowing a few basic terms within the games I play, and I ended up pushing this mindset onto my characters as well since they are gamers too. When Shinkou is standing outside the city while waiting for the monsters to respawn, he is talking about the number of levels he has gained in a certain amount of time, which is used as an indicator for whether you are being productive or not when grinding. The second part of his minor monologue is referring to a simple and obvious trait of level-based games, how much the needed experience rises at each level. Shinkou actually kept track of the requirements at each level and figured out almost exactly how much experience was needed for any given level. Later, during the argument when Shinkou wakes up, he speaks about "continuous fighting". This is a term used to refer to the amount of time spent being productive during a grind session, even if you're merely searching your inventory for better equipment or a potion you picked up a while ago. When he says he spent 7 hours continuously fighting, it actually means he spent at least a portion of that time adjusting equipment, searching his inventory, or resting while waiting for fresh enemies to spawn, which are all considered a productive use of time during a grind session, but are often viewed as wasted time by most players.

As a partial spoiler for the time-skip in between this chapter and the next, Shinkou and the group will be finding another ally they thought they had forgotten in the real world, and the four characters will start getting involved with each other more than they thought possible. Also, everyone begins discovering the potential for unique and pseudo-unique skills (I'll definitely need to explain how Shinkou and Kirito are different at the end of Chapter 2…).