Crash Course Chapter 10
Author's note: I wonder if I should actually read through these chapters before I post them... -_-;
Death. Real death. It was slowly sinking in. Despite that, I tried to keep my mind moving. "Who's Kayaba Aki... something?"
"Kayaba Akihiko is the creator of «Sword Art Online» and the «Nerve Gear». He's the one who came up with this whole thing. After the service started, he disabled the «Log Out» button in the main menu. Her purposely ensured that was the only way to log out of this game, so when he disabled it, it ensured that we were all trapped. Aincrad has become our prison and our new home. Better get used to it." Somehow, it seemed like he was half talking to himself. As hard as it was on me right now, he was probably still in the same place.
"What's Aincrad?" I asked, just asking about anything I didn't get to keep my mind occupied.
"Seriously? Did you even read the manual?" We shook our heads together. "Have you even played a net game before?" Same response. "Oh man... now I have to help you. I could never forgive myself if I left a pair like you to die in this place. Come on, we're heading out to the field to hunt. I'm going to give you a crash course on MMO's and SAO and everything else you need to know.
With little more discussion, we struck out through the city. The men around us were all armed and armored – if a bit lightly. On the way, he explained the history of Sword Art Online. How the Nerve Gear had been created and everyone always wanted a new type of MMO, or Massively Multiplayer Online [Game]. The Nerve Gear was used to «FullDive», meaning it cut your brain off from all your senses and showed you a whole different world. He explained how «SAO» was the game everyone was looking for. That's why all ten-thousand copies had vanished within minutes of sales opening."
We passed into a brightly lit square with many trees lining the paths heading in each direction. Numerous eaves hung over top of the path. On my left, Keiko looked up and held her hands out. A yellow apple fell into her hand as she walked, then another, and another. I looked to see that an apple hung onto each of the plants winding overhead. Because we were walking at the back of the group, no one else noticed.
"It's going to be tough for you guys, that is, if you want to be adventurers. I'm sure at least half of the population is just going to stay in the «Starting City». And hey, that's probably the most sane option. But, we'll never get out of here if we all just wait."
"Umm, I have a question." Keiko said.
"Go ahead."
"What do I do with all these?" He looked back and his jaw dropped when he saw Keiko's arms full of apples. "Where did you get all that?!" He looked all around, and we both pointed up overhead. He looked at the eaves with their apples. "You picked them? Aren't they a bit high?" He looked at least 180 cm(6 feet) tall, and he reached up as far as he could to just reach an apple. He tugged on it, but it didn't budge. He jumped up and wacked it with the flat of his hand. A little purple screen popped up near the apple, though I couldn't really read it.
"Oh, an immortal object. You know what that means? Those apples can only be collected when they fall on their own. It must be a random occurrence. You sure are lucky," he smiled.
"Yeah, I know that, but what should I do with them?" As she spoke, Keiko reached out right in front of her. The apple he'd been fighting with fell *Plop* into her hand.
After looking mystified for a minute, he answered. "Just open your items menu and put the item into the window. That'll store it in your inventory indefinitely. She nodded and did just that. A new icon appeared on the list, «lucky apple». She then collected the rest of the apples we passed on our way out of the plaza.
"Well, that leaves us all in Aincrad, that is, this whole place is Aincrad. We're only on the first floor. You see up there?" We looked up and though the buildings blocked our view to the sides, we could see a huge, flat surface above us. "Each floor is 100m tall. There are 100 floors in total. And we have to fight our way through every single one before we can all get back to the real world.
"Wow, that sounds hard," I commented.
"Hard doesn't even cover it. In the two months of the beta test, they only made it to the sixth floor."
"What? It's really that hard?" Keiko and I asked at the same time. "You're saying, it could take years to get out of here?" I went on.
"Yeah, Aincrad is now a prison. And we're the prisoners."
"Mmmmm. So, what does it look like? You make it sound like it's not really just a world, but more like, a structure?"
"Yeah, it's a giant floating castle. It was pictured on the front of the game."
"Ah, so that's it." At least I'd looked at the game's cover. We finally passed out of the city and into the plains beyond. It still left everyone awestruck at the beauty of this world, despite the truth of it. "Then, where are we going right now?" I asked once I composed myself.
"We're going to go hunting. We need to start before everyone else who doesn't intend to sit idly by swarms this area and take all the PoPs."
"Pops?" I repeated the unknown word.
"Ah, it means all of the monsters that respawn."
I wasn't sure if I really got it, but I nodded. "Wait, monsters?" Did he say that we could actually die in this game? "Ah! About what you said about dying, how do we know that? Err, I mean, like when we're dying, umm..." I wasn't sure how to explain.
He thought for a minute, "Hmmm, I think what you're trying to ask is, 'how do we actually die?' Right? Just keep an eye on your hp bar don't let it hit zero."
"Hp bar?"
"Eehhhh?! You really haven't played any video games before, have you? It's up here, all the way in the right corner of your vision. It's there all the time. Pay close attention to it, you can consider it an exact gauge of how much lifeforce you have left in you. If it drops too low- yellow orange, or red- run. Hide. Do whatever you can to escape with your life. It would really be a shame for either of you to die here."
"What do you mean by that? You've said that a few times now. What do you mean by 'someone like us'?"
"Aren't you models, or idols, or something like that?"
"Eeeehhh?" I saw Keiko's face go all red.
"No, why would we be?"
"What a waste!" He fell to his knees a little too dramatically, big tears suddenly streaming down his face. "With looks like yours, how could you not be models?"
"Huh? You're talking about our avatars? We look nothing like this in real life..." I let out a small sigh.
"What was that?" he blinked at us a few times. "Those are avatars!?" Their entire group looked like a mix between amazed and horrified.
I was starting to get irritated with this. Less time being amazed by every other thing we did and more explaining why it was amazing. "Just explain already."
"Oh duh, again, you missed the tutorial. That was kind of important, but... it's strange. It's like it sets you two apart from everyone else. I'm sure no one else logged in after, say 3:00. That's probably when they got the news out that it was a trap. So, to log in after the tutorial? Impossible— at least that's what I thought until I met you guys.
"You see, the thing is, during the 'tutorial' as Kayaba called it, he explained that this was a death game, just as I've told you already. Then he said something like, 'to make you really sure that this is your reality, I've given you all a gift'." He made a deep kind of cackly voice when he imitated Kayaba. "He had put this item called «Hand Mirror» in each of our inventories. When we all took it out and looked at it, we all changed from our avatars to how we look in the real world."
"Seriously? That's how you actually look?" He nodded.
"Supposedly, everyone playing «SAO» was gathered in the main plaza then. I bet Kayaba didn't expect anyone to log in after all the media coverage his game got. That pretty much means that you guys are the only players who don't look like your real selves."
I thought for a moment before asking, "So, those «Hand Mirrors» can change us to how we really look?" I pulled up my menu and went into the item menu. Lots of apples, but no mirror. "It's not there..."
"But why would you want to look like your real self? Isn't it better to at least get to look better while you're stuck here?"
"Not really, I'm a guy, this body is really inconvenient."
"Eeh? You chose a girl character?"
"No, I accidentally skipped the character creation."
"Same," Keiko chimed in.
"Man, you have got the most awful luck..."
"I knew that already..." tears streaming down my face.
"Actually, now that I think about it, that's really bad." I raised an eyebrow and he went on. "I heard people discussing whether a player should have the option of changing their character's gender, because supposedly it's bad for your mind to spend long periods of time in a body of the opposite gender."
"Eeeehhh!? Bad for my mind? What's that supposed to mean?" I slid to the ground, "why does this always happen to me..."
"Uwaa, that really is unlucky. And I was glad up to this point because I finally got to be Onii-chan's real twin..." Keiko said quietly from my left.
"Sorry, but I can't do anything to help with that. Let's just go and get to hunting. The more experience we get, the faster we all get out of here."
I nodded stiffly. How was I going to manage being stuck in this body for an indefinite period of time? I might be stuck in here for years, maybe even the rest of my life. As I thought my dismal thoughts, we came over the crest of a hill and the rest of the world unfolded before us. Directly ahead, a long way off in the distance, a coniferous forest. To the left, a desert. And far to the right, I made out hills rising in a bumpy pattern. It was easily several kilometers to any of the three locations. It would take hours to walk that far.
"Aincrad's first floor is 10 km in diameter," our guide said from in front of us. He didn't seem to be speaking to us directly though. Almost like he was just remembering it himself.
"That's an awfully long way to walk..." Keiko muttered. I nodded along.
"Well, for now we're finally at the hunting grounds." He stood for a moment as some expression played across his face. "Hey! I just realized something. We haven't actually introduced ourselves yet!"
"Oh" and "that's right" came from Keiko and I.
"Well, I'm Klein. These are my friends, we were all in the same guild in the last game we played."
"A,ah." I bowed. "Umm, are we supposed to use our real names or character names?"
"Definitely character names, it's considered extremely rude to ask anything about the real lives of players, probably even more so now that it's a situation like this..."
"Well, in that case, I'm Rei. Please take care of us."
Following my lead, Keiko said, "My name is Rai. Please take care of us."
"He, Rei and Rai? And randomly generated twin avatars? You two are just a big ball of strange coincidences aren't you?"
We nodded in unison.