Sword Art Online

Forsaken Heavens

Ep1: The Masked Man

Chapter 1

Kazuto arrived home from the academy. This academy being the same one that all members of the SAO incident had to go to in order to continue their education. He and the others had a plan to go questing together in the new Aincrad which was no found in the new Alfheim online game. Because there was a particularly large quest that was added that would require a large party to go after it. Plus it's been at least two weeks since Kazuto had a chance to get back on the game and hang out with the rest of the gang. Mostly because of big projects he had to handle for school.

Kirito put the disc in the system and flipped on the new Amusphere he bought. He would have been using his old nerve gear, but there was a small incident that happened when one of his project partners came over. In all the Nerve Gear just got smashed to pieces, accidently. So after a week of crying about it he bought an AMV-Sphere as a replacement. Now he had to configure it, and then transfer Yui's backup files onto it.

Once that was done Kazuto put the Amusphere on and turned on the power. He walked over and lay on the bed just so he won't get hurt while playing.

"Link Start!" Kirito said activating the device.

The system turned on and showed a screen to test the colors of the screen. Then it ran a check to see if all the connections were operational. Once the status check was complete it dived him straight into the environment.

Once Kirito had gained consciousness in the virtual world he noticed that he was looking out into a large field. It was night time, and the stars in the sky seemed endless in number. There were a few, bodies of water here and there. However there was a problem with this scene. This wasn't where he last was. Last he remembered he was in a tavern when he logged out. He was there along with Asuna, Silica, Lisbeth, Klein, Agil, and Suguha. But this wasn't the tavern; in fact this didn't look like any part of Alfheim online at all.

Kirito swiped his arm to bring out the menu. Once he saw his stats appear he was shocked at what he saw. It said he was a level one, and his stats were almost nothing. Kirito also noticed that the sleeve of his coat, it was very familiar. It was the same coat he had from SAO. Kirito opened up his inventory and found that he had nothing but what was equipped on his character. His sword is only a mere iron sword. Kirito then ran over to a pool of water and looked at his reflection.

The face he saw was his normal face, not what he was expecting to see. Whatever was going on he knew that he wasn't where he was supposed to be, this wasn't Alfheim online. As Kirito looked up he could see that there were other people here also. They also looked just as confused as he was. If that was true then that means that everyone here was supposed to be.

Now he could see people disappearing with a flash of light, it was like a large wave of light coming toward Kirito. Once it reached him he was engulfed in the light and he appeared in a plaza like area along with thousands of other people. This was starting to give Kirito a bad feeling about this. It was way too familiar to a similar game he played before.

People stood in the crowded lobby confused and angry. Unsure what was going on they went crazy almost trying to find a way out. It was loud from all the yelling that Kirito could barely hear his own thoughts. In the center of the plaza there was a large fountain. Which Kirito figured that he should head over there, because if he was any of the others he would do the same? That would be the most likely choice of where they would meet up.

As Kirito pushed through the crowd he was able to slowly make his way over to fountain. There it was surprisingly not as crowded. Kirito just needed to wait to see if he could find any of his friends or even Suguha. However he couldn't find any of them at the moment, and he was really starting to get nervous.

"Hey man, do you know what's going on?" a voice asked.

Kirito turned around to see a person with sand colored hair and electric blue eyes, he stood about Kirito's height, and Kirito had no idea who this was. However this person was wearing armor similar to that of almost everyone hear except for a few exceptions including Kirito himself.

"No, sorry," Kirito replied.

"Where did you get that coat my friend," the other boy asked looking into the crowd.

"I spawned with it, I'm not sure why," Kirito replied.

"Ah, I wish I got a cooler coat," he said.

Strangely this person seemed to not be a scared as everyone else. He was acting calm like as if everything was fine, but Kirito knew that he was scared on the inside. It's a trick that some people did for SAO, if they didn't appeared frightened in times of terror then people will be more likely to choose him as their leader. This guy was planning on making a guild.

The crowd was soon silence by a flash of light, and the next thing Kirito noticed was there was a person standing on top of the fountain in the center. This person wore a modern looking suit that was almost a dark navy in color. He had black straight hair and the most noticeable feature was that his face was covered with a mask. This mask was split down the middle, the right side being black and the left side being white, there was a smile on this mask which change colors when it crossed over the center in order to keep opposite with the background it was on. People around was starting to wonder who this person was. However Kirito had a feeling that they would find out what was going on soon enough.

"Welcome players, to my world, Forsaken Heavens Online!" the man announce with what seemed to be joy.

However the players didn't seem as enthusiastic, the started venting their anger by yelling and cursing at this man. Asking why they had been brought here and what reason did this person have for keeping them hostage. However this seemingly had no effect on fazing the person on the fountains top. Actually he seemed more composed then before.

"I am the creator of this world, you may call me… Hysteria," the masked man continued, "You are now the first hundred thousand citizens of FHO. Allow me to give you the rundown of the situation. I'm pretty sure some of you have noticed some things about this game already, and if you had played SAO, then you might know exactly the crucial thing. That there is no log out button."

Kirito could not believe what he was hearing. Could this really be true? Is this man really recreating the SAO incident? Kirito opened his inventory window again, and sure enough what Hysteria said was true, the log out button was gone.

"You may be wondering why I am doing this; the answer is that I wanted to become a god. But the only way that was possible was by doing what my predecessor Akihiko Kayaba did. But fear not, I shall not make the same mistakes as he did. With that in mind, I am going to inform a certain someone that I cleared all the admin profiles and replace them with mine, so Heathcliff is no longer an administrator, and that only I can control this world," Hysteria continued.

Kirito realized that even though Hysteria didn't mention it, Hysteria was talking to Kirito, so he must have known the details of what happened in ALO. But how could this person know? Only Sugo, Asuna, and himself were in the area in which that happened. The only way is if he looked over the activity logs.

"Also, in order for me to truly be a god, I needed it to be as accurate to the real world as possible. So therefore if you die in here, you also die in the real world. Just like in SAO," Hysteria explained.

This was not happening, this had to be a bad dream. This Hysteria person just grabbed hundred thousand people who were logging in and forced them into another death game? What could this possible accomplish?

"Also, I will tell you that I will not be hidden amongst you, however I will be more or less in control of the events happening in this game. Therefore preventing the risk of anyone beating the game before you're supposed to. Also I am taking this opportunity to inform you that I am not the final boss," Hysteria continued on.

So this Hysteria person was going to be controlling the events in this game. So in all, he is going to spawn monsters in which they will have to fight. How could this person possibly have a good conscience about this?

"Now, to talk about the actual game itself. In this game there are multiple floating islands, a hundred to be exact. Each one is called a territory, and each one has its own scenery and biome. The only way you can head to the next territory is through the territory gates, which can only be activated by an item dropped by the boss of each territories dungeon. Each boss will only drop this item on the first time they're defeated. But just in case a glitch happens each boss crystal can only open that territory's gate and not any of the others. When special events are going to happened they will be announced, and don't worry special events only happen within the area's you have unlocked," Hysteria instructed the masses of players.

"Also if you want help, I would very wisely suggest that you inquire of the former SAO players, you can identify them by looking at what they're wearing. For the Sao players are wearing the gear they last had in SAO itself. Now good luck and I hope to see many of you back on the other side," Hysteria finished.

Hysteria clapped his hands together and he started to glow. The glow briefly became blinding before disappearing al together. Now when people looked, Hysteria was gone, and with that the sanity of the players as well.