Kazuto the Intern Wishgranter: The Goddess Relief Office's Temporary Intern for Aincrad, the Start

I was all ready to start. I had been waiting for this for this moment for months, ever since the beta had ended.

"Keiichi! Kazuto! Lunch is ready!" Urd called from the dining room.

I paused. Oh yeah. Mom and Dad were going on a post-marriage date tonight. It was something the two of them did every so often. Auntie Urd called it almost sickeningly cute and Auntie Skuld got a little jealous but I felt differently.

It is embarrassing.

I can handle my parents acting a bit like newly-weds since they acted like it all the time, but I absolutely don't want to see them on dates.

It was weird! Cousin Suguha called it sweet but they were my parents.

Auntie Urd just said that one day I will understand. I don't think so. I am pretty sure that she is talking about puberty and romance and all that stuff. But I started puberty some time ago, and even though I want to work up the courage to talk with a black-haired girl in homeroom and eventually confess to her, I don't want to act like my parents about it.

Mostly because they never stop acting like a lovey-dovey couple that is on a honeymoon phase. Even if they aren't acting… because they really are a couple that won't stop acting like newly-weds! They haven't changed how they acted in my 14 years of life!

Anyways, Mom had cooked a late lunch for everybody else and lunch time was family time, as she always insisted. So I would have to put off playing Sword Art Online for a few more hours.

Oh well. Mom's cooking was worth putting off SAO.

Or was SAO worth putting off Mom's cooking for a few more hours?

Hmmm.

Wait, Mom might ban me from playing with electronics again if I don't eat lunch with them.

It was a disciple thing for our family. Each of us had our own punishments because grounding didn't exactly work on us as Grandpa Tyr had yet to discover. Auntie Skuld was forced to go without ice-cream or make useless inventions. Usually by her 20th, she was in tears. Auntie Urd either had to give up her alcohol or sit in the corner and reflect. She was usually twitching by the end of half-an-hour spent there. She just couldn't hold still and be bored. Dad, which was very rare as he usually didn't get in trouble, had to go buy and eat take-out instead of Mom's meals. And Mom never did. She was perfect like that. But Auntie Urd had threatened to do 'that' once – whatever 'that' is. They refused to answer me when I asked.

And me? They had to turn off all electronics, put a barrier blocking all EM waves from outside, and force me to run around the temple.

My name is Kazuto Morisato, the demi-god of the internet. Demi-god, fourth class, fourth category (the children division in other words), with a recharge medium of the internet if you want to be formal. I also have a transport medium too - but it hasn't been invented yet.

When, I was a child, I was worried that my formal identification had two fours, as four is a sign of death but Mom explained it as a warning to Death that if it touched a fourth class, fourth category then the being who did was going to suffer a terrifying sealing. She said that the double fours aren't a curse on me, it's a warning of a curse on anyone who harms me. It was kind of nice. Like death is my friend, not my enemy.

But when I was ten years old, I bragged about it at school.

It was the worst day in my life.

My former friends teased and picked on me for it, calling me an early Chuunibyou for thinking that I was a demi-god, even though I really am a demi-god.

When I got home, Dad wouldn't allow Mom to go and tell them that she was a goddess and therefore I truly am a demi-god. He said that we lived happily and (relatively) peacefully by keeping quiet about it. So, I had to endure it.

While I cried and Mom listened, lent me her shoulder to cry on, and comforted with me, Dad went out and talked with every parent of each of my former friends. At the end of it, I had some of my friends apologize to me. Amazingly, a few of them actually meant it and didn't continue once our parent's backs were turned.

I still decided to go to a middle school that no one in my elementary school went to though. I didn't want to be remembered as the early delusional 8th grade student. I was quiet and reserved in school now, very different from elementary school.

Anyways, I had to go eat lunch else Mom would ban me from playing SAO tomorrow.

I glanced back at the NerveGear sitting on my desk, that seemed to whisper, "Play me. Put me on your head and join SAO."

I shook my head. I didn't respond. I had some of Mom's ability to connect with everything but I could only do with programs. It wasn't as fun as the firewalls are bullies and will beat you up if you didn't give them the passwords, hack them, or overpower them.

But that was what Mom's Valkyrie training classes were for. Not that it made the firewalls any nicer when you did beat them up.

It also made Mom disappointed that you used her self-defense lessons to beat up programs.

I sighed. I really want to play but lunch first. Then I can play all afternoon and night long!

Tonight's dinner was pizza night since Mom and Dad were going to eat out.

And cold pizza was pretty good.

Especially when Mom made it yesterday and all we have to do is take it out from the freezer and bake it in the oven.


Lunch was delicious, Keiichi thought happily.

His rather large family, most of whom were the product of birth control not working on a goddess or a mortal who was having regular sex with a goddess, was eating Belldandy's cooking. Today was tempura with rice and side dishes.

And Belldandy's cooking was as delicious as ever. Various vegetables, grown in the garden they had planted as the food budget had grown bigger and bigger as the family had grown, were especially delicious when Belldandy had raised the food with love and care before preparing to feed it to her family.

"Thanks, Belldandy," Keiichi said, smiling at his wife, who beamed back at him. "It was delicious."

"I am glad, Keiichi," Belldandy said, smiling back.

"Thanks for the food," came the chorus of replies from the children old enough to speak.

"I can't believe you still act like that," Urd shook her head. "Years of being boyfriend and girlfriend and now over a decade of married life and you still say the exact. Same. Things."

Keiichi coughed in embarrassment. "Well, just because it was delicious years ago doesn't mean Belldandy's food isn't delicious now. It still is and is as good as ever."

Urd buried her face in her hands and mumbled, "Yeah, yeah. I get it. Lovebirds won't ever go out of love. Just-" she sighed, in obvious resignation to a daily ritual that was over a decade and a half old, "Continue on. Say the exact same words as always."

Belldandy and Keiichi blushed in embarrassment as their children giggled.

Kazuto, their oldest and first-born son, quickly got up and scampered towards the door.

"Kazuto," Belldandy called out without turning around as she helped her youngest boy, 13 month old Kei, to eat his lunch.

Kazuto froze at the door.

"Yes, Mom?" he asked, a hint of dread in his voice.

"Did you put your plate away?" she asked without looking.

"No, Mom," he said sullenly.

"Then please-"

Belldandy's motherly rebuke was interrupted by the phone ringing.

"Ai, after putting your dishes in the sink, can you please get the phone?" Belldandy asked her oldest daughter.

"Yes, mom," she said as she got up to put her dishes in the sink.

Kazuto almost grumbled as he turned back to the table to put his plate away.

"And remember, Kazuto, it is your turn to help clean the dishes," Belldandy finished her instructions to her oldest.

"But Mom-!"

"What is it, Kazuto?"

"But today is the day for the release of SAO!"

"And I am sure that it will be just as fun as it would be if you waited half-an-hour."

"But there is a rumor that Kayaba Akihiko will be in Starting City today!" Kazuto protested.


I glared at Mom but she was immune to my glares as she continued feeding Kei.

But- it was Kayaba Akihiko. He was amazing!

What if I missed his public appearance?

I wouldn't be able to ask him any questions about Full Dive technology!

"I still don't see what that jumped-up mortal has got that is better than anything I can do," Auntie Skuld grumbled.

Skuld looked like she was in her late teenage years, but don't let that fool you. She, like Mom and Aunt Urd, is a goddess. They age slower than a mortal or even a demi-god does.

In other words, she was probably older than Dad.

But we don't talk about age here. Something about mutually assured destruction between Auntie Urd and Auntie Skuld and somehow Grandma Ansuz is in there with the pact of assured destruction.

We all know how old Grandma Hild is though. Somewhere over 10,000. And she'll give you a wedgie if you ask for a more precise number at her birthday party.

"But Kayaba did all that without any magic or divine technology," I pointed out as I deposited my plate into the sink and turned around to face my aunt. "It isn't quite fair to compare you to a human who had to revolutionize the field of virtual technology to create the first virtual reality game. And he did it before his 40th birthday."

Auntie Skuld twitched.

She really doesn't like it when we argue with her. But she loves it when we spend time with her and praise her.

Unfortunately, we grow out of it.

But then again, Mom never stops churning out babies, so Auntie Skuld never stops having the cheerful voices of young kids following her around, chirping out "Wow, Auntie Skul! Auntie Skul!"

She loves it. About half of her inventions are designed to awe the young ones.

"Moooom!" Ai called out from the hallway phone. "It's Grandpa! And it's for Kazuto!"

The room went quiet except for the happy sounds Kei was making as he ate before he tilted his head at why everything was so quiet.

Grandpa never called unless it was important or our birthdays.

He found it difficult to clear the time for it.

And we almost never saw him, only for a brief few minutes at our birthdays before he had to go back to work.

Of course, we understood (we being the older children) that Grandpa was in the difficult position of loving two different women, Grandma Ansuz and Grandma Hild. And that due to stuff happening, he and Grandma Hild could never meet or one of them would die.

So he took the onerous responsibility of staying cooped up in Heaven unless Hild sent a message saying that she would spend a day cooped up in Hell so that he could visit us.

According to Mom and Auntie Urd and Auntie Skuld's stories, he spent most of that time cooped up at his desk. Grandpa's first bit of free time in centuries had been for our family picture that hung on the temple wall.

It was outdated now, with about five more kids that weren't in the photo, but at the time Grandma Ansuz had scheduled time off in Grandpa Tyr's schedule just so that he could make it to the picture taking event.

That had been the start of Grandpa making regular trips to our birthday parties as he became aware that we grew up much faster than his daughters had. If he didn't make regular time off to see us, we would never see him until we were all grown up.

As it was, he was always shocked at how much we have grown since the last time he saw us.

But why was he asking for me? My 14th birthday had been last month.

I looked to Mom, who looked back at me.

"Go and see what Grandpa Tyr wants, dear," she told me.

As I took the permission to skip out on the dishes, I could hear Mom ask Dad to follow and find out too.


The family sat in silence around our table.

Grandpa Tyr was asking for our help.

Apparently, Kayaba Akihiko had cheated a little in making SAO. He had made a contract with the demons.

And Hild had just called him, panicking as she couldn't stop the contract.

Mokkurkalfi had been too caught up in planning and coding and building machines for a virtual world and how to link it to human sensations by manipulating their nerves, to pay attention to how Kayaba had altered the contract as they had negotiated it. And now, the Ultimate Force for Niddhogg was keeping Hild from terminating the contract or keeping it from being made.

And Kayaba had just informed the government that SAO was a death game.

10,000 people would be trapped in a virtual world where no godly, demonic, or earthly power could separate them. Only a resident of Aincrad, and a hero of Aincrad at that according to what Mokkurkalfi remembered, could end it.

And the only thing Grandma and Grandpa could do was send in someone to help free people.

And only a demi-god could survive the radiation from a NerveGear. Our bodies were hardy enough that it was very difficult to kill someone with the blood of a god or demon or earth spirit.

And everyone, Grandpa Tyr, Grandma Hild, and Grandma Ansuz, knew that I was going to play Sword Art Online. It had been all I could talk about at my birthday party last month.

So, they had called to ask me to make that sacrifice for the people who were already trapped in it.

They had no other options. The Ultimate Force of Nidhogg was keeping people from wishing for their freedom, whether in a demon contract or a wish from a Goddess.

To be honest, I was scared.

A death game. A game that would kill you if you messed up and your avatar died.

I would survive, but…

What about everyone else? What about Argo and Cooper and all the other Beta players who had come back for the main game?

We all had died multiple times per floor. Most of the time, it wasn't even to bugs or glitches, just to gameplay and stupid choices!

And now, we couldn't mess up even once.

One mistake and…

You're gone.

You're dead like Grandma Takano and Grandpa Keima.

Never to wake up again.

Never to see Mom or Dad or my younger sisters and my younger brothers-

I took control of my breathing like Mom had taught me when I started learning how to use my magic. You had to control your emotions or else your magic would rage out of control.

I retraced my thoughts, noticing that I was taking it almost for granted that I would go.

Yes, it appeared that I already had decided.

I was going to go in.

But I wasn't going to go in without help.

Grandpa had offered me a temporary license. I would be interim Fourth Class, Second and Special Duty Category, unrestricted.

Meaning that I while I was still a child, I would be working under the offices of wish-granting and Valkyrie duty. And I would not be bound by my class limitations of almost no power because no one trusted young children with any degree of power when a temper tantrum could potentially turn people inside out.

It meant that I could do magic.

Not that I knew how to use magic inside Aincrad. Things got a little tricky when you were dealing with people's minds and software and I didn't have either an angel or a familiar yet to help control my magic with fine precision.

But if I managed to find a GM terminal, I could potentially use my power to try to hack Aincrad from the inside.

And since no external force could free the trapped people-

-what about a force from within?

And Grandpa said that he would try to create some new legislation about if a god working under both wish-granting and Valkyrie duty (meaning me since gods and goddesses only got to be under one category at any given time) were to grant a wish and not use Yggdrassil to grant the wish but instead did it with their own power, then the power that Yggdrassil would have used to fulfill the wish would be added to my own reserves.

So despite being only slightly stronger than Dad in terms of magical strength, I could potentially do magic that only an unrestricted god could do.

So all I needed to do was figure out how to interact with Aincrad.

And it would not be easy as simply entering and then starting to hack.

Code and programming was meaningless if you tried to start anywhere other than the start. I had tried communicating with Aincrad from inside Aincrad before.

It had been pure gibberish.

Mom and Auntie Skuld said that if I found a way to control where I started reading so that I started at the start of a program, then I could understand what Cardinal had been saying. So if I started reading at say, an internal GM console where I could make inputs into the game without getting the annoying firewalls telling me that I didn't have permission to do that.…

I could very well give myself administrator rights and tell the game to let everyone log out.

And it wouldn't violate the contract that Hild could not break due to Mokkurkalfi's mistake.

As Grandpa waited for my decision, I spoke up and told him.


"Thank you, Kazuto," Grandpa said with a note of gratitude, dread and frustration in his voice. "There is nothing else we can do. So please, save them. I'll do what I can to give you support, but you'll have to do much of this on your own."

"And Kazuto."

"I'm proud of you. This must have been a difficult decision to make, and you made it."

I didn't tear up.

But I couldn't say anything past the lump in my throat either.

Grandpa never said anything like that.

For him to say that he was proud of me-

It meant that he was really proud of me.

I let him hang up before turning around to see my dad standing behind me.

I couldn't say anything.

But Dad could.

He just placed his hands on my shoulder, bent down a little to look me in the face and told me, "Kazuto."

"I'm proud of you too."

He then drew me into a hug.

I didn't mind.

It meant that Dad didn't see me tear up.

Several of my siblings crowded around me, coming into the hug too.

Skuld had upgraded the phone so that if we all stood really close, anyone else could perfectly hear the phone too if we pressed one of a few buttons. And avoided the self-destruct button.

"Why don't you go and give everyone else and Mom a hug before you go be a hero?" Dad asked. "I'll explain everything to them but I think you said that there was only a limited amount of time where Kayaba was in Aincrad?"

"Now just go and do your best," Dad pulled me away a little so he could look me in the eyes. "Because I believe that you will succeed."

I could only nod and follow his advice.


Thanks to Dad explaining things while I said my goodbyes, I was lying down on my futon, ready to start the game, with everyone in our family around me, in less than 5 minutes since Grandpa ended his call.

"Goodbye Kazuto," my siblings said. "Good luck!"

"Come home safely Kazuto," Mom said while holding my youngest brother, tears in her eyes but a smile on her face. I think it was the first time I had seen Mom cry.

I almost recanted my decision at seeing them. But I couldn't leave my fellow Beta Testers to face Aincrad alone.

"Go in and kick ass, kid!" Auntie Urd said, giving me a thumbs up.

"Urd!" Mom scolded her sister for her language.

Auntie Skuld wasn't there as she was busy trying to figure out a way to create an interface device with my NerveGear.

She and Mokkurkalfi had a rivalry. If Mokkurkalfi could make something, Aunt Skuld would try to beat it.

And since Mokkurkalfi had been limited to earthly materials and no magic for the design of the NerveGear, Aunt Skuld was certain that she could make something that could run rings around it.

"Go safely Kazuto," Dad said, one hand on Mom's shoulder. "You go with our faith and trust."

I just gave a nod, not trusting my voice to respond.

Before I said the crucial words.

"Link Start."