That is my Zelda reference for the day…
I forgot to mention I'm changing the SAO timeline just a little…
Kirito is 16 so he's a little older; however, the current date is:
November 5th, 2028
Kirito's Perspective
I had waited days for this… no years it was like the culmination of my very being was built for this moment, I sat wide awake for the fated release of Sword Art Online a game that would end up having me lost in it for more than a few hours… or even days... It would be years until I felt a real dawn again. I sat up in my bed, crawled across the floor to the chair in front of my three monitor setup, my classmates made fun of me for "Three monitors is so 2018 Kirito, don't you realize curved monitors are the new trend?" I could care less about those comments.
I smiled at my webcam for the facial recognition, as my desktop loaded I looked in the corner for the time… 11:30 pm I overslept the start of the pre-launch Livestream for the Japanese release of SAO, roughly 200k copies sold, plus the 20k beta testers only 5k of which were on the Japanese servers. I closed all my programs and started Google Chrome, clicking quickly on my bookmarks bar to go to twitch, searching up the SAO launch stream wasn't even needed, with 150K+ current viewers it bigger than some esports events these days. I started watching an interviewer talking to two of the developers: Almdea Filqu, she was the kinetic actress they used to rig all the sword skill motions for rapiers, an Olympian and also a game Dev a rare combo. The other dev, Yakamaru Shrai, was part of the NPC AI coding department, he was online often during the beta, making sure that Town NPCs were having human interactions with players and assessing their deep learning AI.
I listened to them ramble on for a while talking about the long stressful hours they took working on the SAO, and the team developing nerve gear, I'd heard it before asking some of the same exact questions the interviewer was back in the beta, one dev even temp banned me from chat for "Spamming" him, being mute for a while wasn't a fun experience, but I didn't really hate it either. I checked the time again: 12:10, I should go get food, and take a shower before I start playing all night, my "parents" didn't understand when I was using the Nervegear, or sleeping so I could get away with pulling all-nighters even on school days.
After a nice shower, I sat back down at my computer reopening the live stream. It was 12:53 and Yakamaru Shrai was being hooked up to a Nervegear so he could stream the game live, we weren't allowed to stream in the beta so it seems he would be the first to stream SAO.. and also the last, I didn't know what is user was until after the death game was over, and I was frankly very surprised when I was told. I checked my checklist just to make sure all my school work was finished, feeling relief that I had nothing left to do, I turned my computer off, unplugged the LAN cable and inserted it into the Nervegear.
I plotted myself on my bed, put on the Nervegear to read the timeout, 12:59… I counted the seconds in my head till the numbers read 13:00 and shouted aloud my last words in the real world for a long time "Link Start!", and then everything went white, after a bit of loading I found myself at the character select screen my first save file sat there from the beta, allowed to be reused I tapped it, a notification came up "Your data has been wiped from the beta; however, please receive this special gift!" (x1 Blooming Necklace), was added to your inbox. After a reconfirmation of my account id I logged in, and found myself standing at the center of the plaza in The Town of Beginnings surrounded by other new players, I instantly equipped my new necklace reading the stats "Exp decline decreased by 10%", I thought for a second realizing 'Ah, must have to do with the fact that mobs give less exp over time, good to know the curve is reduced at least by a little.'
A message then popped up in my notifications "Hello Beta Tester, would you like to skip the starting quest?" I selected yes, it was a simple quest that explained the layout of the town, how to open your menu, some options you can mess with, and how to use your first sword skill simple stuff. I gained 7 exp for finishing it and went from lv.0 to 1, all my stats increased from 1 to 3, all of my skills raised to 1, after inserting my extra points from to personalize my character to be a good round starting character I put all my points into "Distinguished Blades" one and a half handed longswords with higher reach, higher damage, but lower attack speed and crit chance. I ran to the shop distract as fast as I could to buy my first sword and a set of light armor.
When I reached the shop I grabbed the cheapest out of the Distinguished Blades, or Dis-Blades for short. 1000 col down already, 4000 col to go, I bought a jacket for 800, a hard leather breastplate for another 800, a set of leather greaves for 1200, a belt for 400, some bronze gauntlets for 600 for blocking, and an agility ring for 500, leaving the last of it to buy 10 tiny health potions thank Kiba there was no tax.
As I set out to the southern field after picking up all 6 boar killing related quests, I felt as if I was being followed, but I shrugged it off it was most likely just another beta tester and set out on my first adventure in the full release of SAO.
I tend to try and shoot for 750-1250 words per chapter, and keep it to one perspective per chapter, if one POV isn't possible I'll just do it from a third person POV to not confuse people.
