Author's Note: I'm glad you're all enjoying this story. I'm having fun writing it, I tend to switch between my stories now and then when I get a little burned out on a particular franchise. It's time for a celebration of Fate/Extra's anniversary. As a result, I'm releasing chapters for each of my Digital Human stories over the course of the next three days. Enjoy!

Many wishes flow through the deep ocean, filled with despair or hope, none should have been answered so intensely. However, a different ocean of a different time sends into a world of swords a single soul forged through the flames of war. Now, what will the Digital Human do to save thousands?


Digital/Progressive

Chapter 7: Twisted Worded Tutorial

Asuna Yuuki took another read at the quest sent to all players. The young female had the courtesy of receiving its early version from Hakuno, and had expected it to change, but Asuna was surprised at how significant the system had twisted the hacker girl's words. What should have been an introduction to Hakuno's presence for the wider community had been altered to make the hacker seem like some sort of NPC for what Maple called an event.

She found it offensive, it was cruel for Akihiko Kayaba to dehumanize Hakuno like this by making her appear like some sort of computer program.

Still, it had been a bit of a humorous sight for every player around Asuna at the time to almost simultaneously open their menus when they received it. However, there had been a lot of confusion, mostly outcries, on why an actual tutorial was now implemented two and a half weeks after the launch. There was a tutorial beforehand, basically mandatory for all new players, but calling it a tutorial was like comparing a professionally written guide to a child's picture book. It didn't teach players how to use Sword Skills, didn't tell them how the sensations worked, and barely covered any other in-game mechanics. It mostly described the menu, its various panels, and how to interact with objects.

So frankly, the most important bits, concerning actual combat, ways to strengthen oneself, or supportive roles, remained woefully inadequate.

Especially for individuals like Asuna, who's experience in video games were only a few mobile apps.

Now, of course, Asuna had every intention of completing Hakuno's new quest.

But there was a mild issue.

"We can do it later, let's finish the quests we have now," Maple, her only party member, insisted.

Asuna wanted to do Hakuno's quest now, without delay, they held more purpose and merit to be completed than quests designed by Sword Art Online's system and by proxy, Akihiko Kayaba. It was a position that she refused to budge on, and her normally quiet demeanor gave way to a determination that Maple had never seen before.

"The quest will still be here, Hakuno's quest takes priority, we don't know how long before Akihiko messes with her quest again," Asuna argued.

"The quests didn't change before after the first alteration," Maple replied. "And we need the equipment and cor."

"I'm sure Hakuno put both of those in the tutorial as well," Asuna said. "This town has a church, we'll talk to the priest there."

Maple sighed, "Alright. Maybe it'll coincide with the other quests? Tutorial quests tend to be straightforward."

"Was Sword Art Online's tutorial straightforward?" Asuna countered.

"Well, no-"

"Hakuno is a hacker, not a designer," Asuna further pointed out.

"I know, but-"

"Then we need to do her's first," Asuna finished as she started walking towards the church building.

The younger black-haired girl relented, "Okay, I didn't… I just wanted to help."

Asuna paused, remembering that although Maple had more gaming experience, she was younger than Asuna. "I… Apologize," She said, calming down from her earlier demeanor and turned to face Maple. "This… This means a lot to me." Her determination to achieve something, anything, against their kidnapper had almost caused a small rift with the only other female player that Asuna had seen outside the Town of Beginnings.

Unexpectedly, Maple brightened up immediately, as if undisturbed by what Asuna believed to be an argument. "No, it's fine. Honesty, I should have thought as much!" Maple lighty laughed, her positively causing Asuna to smile. "I keep thinking some things are like a regular MMO, so thanks for correcting me," She answered, then raised both hands with determined fists. "We have to beat Kayaba by helping Hakuno. So let's go do her goddess quest!" She said excitedly in a joking manner.

"Maybe you'll get a Skill to become an angel?" Asuna returned with a joke, lightened by the mood.

"That would be great! I could fly! Imagine flying in a Full Dive!"


Hakuno Kishinami facepalmed in sheer embarrassment, wishing dearly that the Cardinal System would revise its revision and the players would forget about the sudden proclamation of Hakuno being some sort of in-game deity. But alas, such a wish would remain unfulfilled, and Hakuno would have to work around it to her favor, only hoping that a religion won't spout from the players themselves and remain solely with the NPCs.

"Are you stressed, Hakuno? Do you want to talk about it?" Yui's presence was appreciated, but Hakuno would much rather her be silent altogether right now.

"No," Hakuno replied in complete monotone.

She refused to dive deeper into this goddess nonsense and was too embarrassed to talk about it.

"Alright," Yui replied simply, sitting on top of the bed and watching her passively.

After a brief moment of respite, Hakuno Kishinami returned her focus to her GM screens, particularly the tab related to the management of quests. Hakuno did not have the administrative authority to freely change quests, after all, quest management was mostly the Cardinal System's responsibility. This meant that although Hakuno could create quests, she couldn't edit them afterward, which meant any mistakes she wished to correct, or any changes that Cardinal System did, couldn't be rectified.

Hakuno could, however, check quest content and rewards, but not any particular events caused by it. So if a quest, for example, spawned a particular monster not mentioned in the quest text as a surprise, Hakuno wouldn't know about it unless it occurred on Asuna and Maple's end.

While her tutorial quest chain had been revised to its more lore-like state, the goals for the quest remained identical. A simple talk, exercise on how to use a Sword Skill, how to increase Skill levels, and other basic knowledge required to survive at least on the First Floor's least aggressive areas taught through various small quests culminating together as the tutorial. The rewards, however, had been adjusted significantly, but not to the Digital Human's surprise.

After all, she had tried to be extremely generous in the rewards on purpose, to test the waters on how much she could give players before Cardinal adjusted it. In fact, the first quest reward for simply talking to a priest was supposed to give a dagger, but it had been altered by the Cardinal System to be a simple currency reward, most of the tutorial rewards had been changed to this, with the exception of those quests that presented in some way a bit of danger, which's rewards held HP potions that were higher quality than what was commonly found on the First Floor.

Well, dangerous in the way that they require a target, which can be any hostile mob. While theoretically possible for a player to use a Sword Skill without a target, that required players to forgo the system's assistance, and it hadn't been nearly long enough for anyone to have the skill to replicate Sword Skills yet. But at least the quest now actually explained how to use the Sword Skill, instead of them having to rely on Argo's Guidebook or system hints.

Yui had explained that Sword Skills basically take control of a player's movements, they only required an activation stance, then the system directs, calculates, and executes the Sword Skill for the player. Although players can attack realistically, Sword Skills had a significant damage output calculation that was impossible to replicate normally unless one attacked multiple times in one hit.

Which was impossible for all but Heroic Spirits, in Hakuno's opinion.

Still, at least those quality HP potions would help players, it didn't take a genius to know that something that restored health with a higher value over the same period of time a lower quality potion did mean it actually restored the player's health quicker.

Unfortunately, it was only ten vials.

So players may hesitate to use them over the lower quality variant unless in emergencies, which was fine for now. It was basically the equivalent of having an HP potion from Floor 3 on Floor 1. Hopefully it will prevent player deaths, along with the prevention that the tutorial would provide with its key knowledge.

Now, it was time for the other part of her improvised plan.

Hakuno Kishinami navigated through the menu, ignoring the Player Menu and opening the GM Tickets screen. With her name now known, responding to tickets would be plausible without being brushed off as some sort of hoax. Well, perhaps still treated as an NPC, but Hakuno had been compared to the Moon Cell's NPCs before, so didn't mind too much.

Besides, it wasn't a lie, a Digital Human that she is.

Of course, there were thousands upon thousands of tickets, with only a tiny fraction of them closed, the rest remain open and unanswered, outcries against their kidnapper responded with only silence in return. The closed cases were mostly those before what Hakuno presumed was the revelation of Sword Art Online's true nature, and what few afterward were genuinely game-related.

Not entirely surprising that there were some people actually happy with their present circumstances, Hakuno had seen much worse cases in the Moon Holy Grail War.

"Yui," Hakuno spoke, looking toward the young-appearing AI, who had not faltered from her passive watch over Hakuno's actions, instead of her usual monitoring of SAO's players.

"How can I help, Hakuno!" Yui beamed brightly, eager to aid the hacker.

"Can I answer any ticket?" She questioned.

Yui looked thoughtful for a moment, then replied, "I do not know. Typically, tickets are used to report in-game issues or problematic player behavior. The Cardinal System typically matches most bugs or game balance issues, with the exception of those requiring a human response, such as discovered exploits or breaks outside the system's authority."

"What would be outside the system's authority?" She asked.

"Primarily game mechanics or features not released for public consumption, those kinds of tickets were heavily present in the Beta Test" Yui answered. "But they are outside of your current Game Master rights."

Hakuno Kishinami couldn't answer every single ticket, not without spending a significant amount of time doing that and only that. There looked to be a filtration option, likely created by Kayaba to sort out the outcries from legitimate tickets.

But what about tickets asking how certain game mechanics worked, or perhaps problems related to the device that entrapped them, the NerveGear?

"Are there issues that can arise from the NerveGear outside of the present circumstance?" Hakuno questioned.

"The NerveGear was created for mass production in mind, as such, a specific standard is used for them. While it does have an arrangement of settings to account for most individuals, there are rare cases known as FullDive Non-Conformity, which can cause a delayed player response, improper use of the senses, or other minor issues. In some extreme cases, they can be incapable of FullDive, but there are no players in Sword Art Online with that, as they would be unable to log into the game in the first place," Yui lectured like a teacher, her knowledge of material related to the virtual world that helped create Sword Art Online quite substantial.

An imperfect system to interact with the virtual world.

However, this wasn't the Moon Cell, and the players weren't Spiritron Hackers.

"Is it possible to pinpoint people with FullDive Non-Conformity?" Hakuno asked.

Yui jumped off the bed and opened her own set of menus, "Technically it is. The NerveGear sends and receives data to and from SAO's servers. So it would be possible to cross-reference player data and single out those with the condition. But player data is heavily protected and regulated by law, only administrator GMs would have access… Unless you hack?"

To hear speak about the law in the situation that is Sword Art Online was hypocritical, but the Mental Health Counseling Program was also a victim of circumstance.

"Mmh…" The magus thought about it for a moment but decided to hold off on the idea for now. Even if she could interact with somebody having FullDive Non-Conformity, there wouldn't be anything that Hakuno Kishinami could do without Code Casts, and that was something she'd rather avoid using on somebody.

So, in the end, there wasn't much Hakuno could do right now.

All she could do was wait.

She opened the Observation ID cameras belonging to Asuna and Maple.

And watch until she learned more.