"THE GAME HAS BEEN CLEARED. THE GAME HAS BEEN CLEARED."

I was dead. I had destroyed Kayaba Akhiko, the very creator of the game which I had been trapped in for far too long. The man who was posing as one of the players of the game.

The man who killed Asuna.

But as I thought, I realized that I shouldn't be thinking – I should be dead. As far as I was concerned, the dead didn't have thoughts. They were just dead. So what was I, then? How was I alive? Was this really what happened when you died in SAO? Did you just float around in the darkness, thinking?

I didn't think so.

I slowly came to notice that the darkness was due to my eyes being shut. Realizing this, I quickly opened them.

What met my eyes was a room unlike any I'd seen in the world of SAO. But I had the peculiar feeling I wasn't out of the death game just yet. The room was all white. There was no other color I could see. I was standing up, though, so there was probably a floor made out of glass. But other than this floor, there was nothing in the room. Not a single thing. Maybe this was it; the players of SAO that had their HP drop to zero were teleported to this odd room and stayed there forever.

As soon as I thought this, two figures emerged right in front of my eyes. They popped up out of thin air. I couldn't believe it myself, but since I had the assumption I was in SAO, anything was possible. After all, it was just a video game.

But there stood Heathcliff, who was actually Kayaba Akhiko, and next to him was a person that automatically made me form a wide grin.

"Kirito-kun!" Asuna exclaimed.

"Asuna..." I smiled wider, uncontrollably.

"Yes, yes. A happy reunion, but you two are going to need to listen to this."

My grin formed into a frown. I had almost forgotten that Kayaba was in the room with us, and whatever he was about to say was definitely important. I could tell.

Asuna rushed to my side before the creator of SAO began talking. We sat side-by-side on the floor, glaring up at the person I once knew as Heathcliff.

"You may think that you have won Sword Art Online." Kayaba stated.

"I... I didn't win? That's... no! I killed you!" I gritted my teeth.

"Yes, indeed. You killed me, and I was the 'final boss' of the game. However, while you and the thousands of other people tried to beat my floating castle, I expanded it."

I stared hard at this man. What did he even mean? How could he "expand" SAO without telling the players?

"There are fifty more floors of Sword Art Online."

"NO!" I rushed over to Kayaba Akhiko and swiftly jammed my fist into his chest. Nonchalantly, he kicked me back across the room. Asuna cried out my name.

"How... could you!?" I demanded, groaning. I noticed that I didn't have an HP bar in this odd room, but somehow, Kayaba's kick hurt me. I felt real, actual pain where his foot met my body.

"It is only your own fault, Kirito." Kayaba frowned upon me.

"I don't believe I did anything wrong..." I cockily shot back. The tall man walked closer to me. Asuna stood up and guarded me.

"No..." I moaned.

"Please, Asuna, I'm not trying to hurt your knight in shining armor. I was just walking closer." Kayaba explained, but Asuna didn't move.

"Anyway, in these final fifty floors of Aincrad, there are no more pathetic zones where you can be protected. Cities will not be protected. I have created these extra floors because I realized my mistake soon after the game began: everyone just waited it out in the towns and didn't participate in battles. But this will not be the case any more."

"You... monster..." I replied, standing up beside Asuna.

"I am not a monster. I just want my own world. It has been my dream for a long, long while, and in the real world, you can't just hide in a protected zone."

What he was saying sunk in. I wasn't close to being done with Sword Art Online. There were fifty more floors, and with no protection, murders would be highly common. I hated to admit it, but the death game was fair. Besides the fact that you die on Earth if you die inside the game, the rules were all fair. But now, all that was in the past. No one is safe. Everyone who isn't talented at SAO will perish. I cringed.

How could he do this?

"Everyone will be teleported to Floor 101 within ten minutes."

Floor 101.

Who knew what kind of monsters lay on such a high-level floor? No one was prepared. How could we fend off monsters that are immensely higher leveled than ourselves?

"To change things up a little bit, however, some things are different about these final fifty floors. The first thing is that I have completely re-done all the monsters in the game. No monster from the first one hundred floors will appear in the next fifty." Kayaba added, after a period of silence.

I turned to look at Asuna. She had a stunned look on her face, but hadn't said anything. When she noticed I was looking at her, she turned to face me, and for a brief moment, we were both happy. But Kayaba started again, and snapped out of it.

"The next fifty floors also have many new items. The same rules of SAO apply, so there are no revival items, but there are new animals that you can mount for fast transportation as well as a couple new types of armor and weaponry."

I didn't care about this news, still being angry about the fact that there even were fifty more floors. What if when we reach the end of those floors, we get met with fifty more floors? There was no guarantee that that wouldn't happen. What did Kayaba Akhiko want to do? Kill every single one of the ten thousand people who joined SAO?

"I will leave you two to talk, and in ten minutes, the teleportation will begin. Please, feel free to prepare for the next few floors, because you will need it. The monsters, I can assure you, are immensely challenging." Kayaba warned, and with that, he was gone. In less than a second, he had disappeared.

There was a period of silence, but I felt warmth on my shoulder. Looking, I saw Asuna's head resting there. I couldn't help but smile.

"So... we aren't done after all." I grimaced.

"Kirito-kun... I hate to bring it up, but... our real world bodies. We surely can't live for too much longer." Asuna solemnly sighed.

"That doesn't matter now. We've been living here for two years and nothing has happened." I reassured her. I didn't want her to worry about that, nor worry much at all. As long as we were careful, we could survive Floor 101, and all the floors after that. The important thing was that we were still together.

"Okay, Kirito-kun..." Asuna whirled my whole body around and gave me a firm kiss. It lasted for a long time, and momentarily, I forgot about all of my troubles.

When it ended, we both had serious looks on our faces. As much as I hated him now, Kayaba Akhiko had a point; we should prepare for the next fifty floors. They would be the toughest challenge any player in SAO had ever been met with, and we certainly needed to discuss it.

"What are we going to do? The last boss on the 75th floor... it killed so many of the fighters on the front lines... I don't know if we can manage to go through fifty more floors." Asuna stated.

"We'll just have to grind a lot. If we get lucky, we can get leveled up quickly from the high-level monsters that will undoubtedly be on Floor 101." I brought up. "You're a really great fighter, Asuna. I know you will be able to survive."

She forced a smile.

"You too."

I slowly sat back on the glass floor again, and Asuna copied my movement. We sat there in silence for a moment, thinking. Were we really powerful enough? Or was I just trying to make her feel better...?

No, we were. And we would prevail. I knew we would reach Floor 150 and finally end Sword Art Online.

As for everyone else... I was weary of them being able to survive. Them. The ones who stayed in the towns and stayed away from monsters in fear of dying. Just when they thought they were saved, they now were being brought into a floor without any protection, unsafe from murderers. Thousands of people would die in an instant. Only a few hundred would remain. The ones who fought on the front lines. The ones who could protect themselves.

"We... we should really take another break from the front lines sometime within the next fifty floors." Asuna suddenly said.

"And return to our cabin?"

"Yes. Back to the peaceful Floor 22." Asuna sighed.

"I promise we will. No matter what." I replied.

Asuna giggled.

"What is it?"

"It's just that... that's what you said to me a while ago, in SAO. You promised you would protect me."

"I'm... sorry." I apologized, looking away from Asuna.

"No, no... you did, Kirito-kun. Even though I technically died... we're still here together. You kept your promise, and I know you'll keep that one, too." Asuna added. I turned around to look at her again. She was smiling widely, and I joined in. We sat there together for some of the last peaceful moments in a long time, staring at each other, smiling.

Suddenly, a burst of light surrounded us.

"This is it." I held out my hand, and Asuna grabbed it.

"We will survive." Asuna happily said.

The light got bigger and bigger until it fully surrounded us. Asuna went out of my view, as did the white room where I spoke to the creator of the death game, Kayaba Akhiko. All I saw was blue light, and I knew I was ready.

I would finally beat Sword Art Online.