The final step in coming home. The first chapter of my reboot for the other story! Time to figure out if I can juggle four stories at once. Let's see how this one goes. A little context for this story. One, Kaneki is Kirito, but not exactly. The story should explain that relatively well in the first chapter. Anyhow, let's begin. Tell me what you think of it.
Kirigaya "Kirito" Kazuto was a socially inept teenager whose life revolved around technology. Ever since he had discovered that he had been adopted by his aunt and uncle, raised as their own, he had realized that he would never belong, even if his "family" treated him as their own. And he carried this mentality through life, always a short step away from just disappearing from his "family". His parents were dead. He had been fed a lie his entire life.
So when Kirito was trapped in the Death Game of Sword Art Online, he gritted his teeth, said goodbye to Klein and ran. He ran, and ran, and ran. In another universe, one more commonly known to people, this would allow him to get a head start on those that were stuck in the Town of Beginnings, paralzed by their own fear. It would be the first step in a long, lonely road, which would eventually end in victory. He would become the Black Swordsman, defeating the creator of the game himself in a fight to the death, with all the lives of the remaining players in SAO on the line. And this victory would save the people who had been trapped in the Death Game. After two years of fighting and dying in a world which didn't exist, the survivors of SAO would be liberated.
This is not that story.
In this story, it would not be the socially inept, but strong-willed teen that dived into Sword Art Online to further escape from reality. The realization that he had been trapped in a world where dying in a game meant dying in real life, his mind fractured and splintered before finally snapping on his way out of the Town of Beginnings. Instead of travelling to the next town, he would look for something else. A high-leveled dungeon, one that would be manageable for any player level four and above, but for a newbie like him at level one, it would take the most skilled player in all of SAO to defeat the dungeon, and that would be with a proper strategy in mind and more than a few health potions. It was a sister spot to the one that Asuna Yuuki would soon find herself in, searching for an escape route from Sword Art Online. Kirito, armed with only the swords that he had been given at the beginning of the game, fought for an entire day and night, until his swords shattered and his last bit of health was chipped away. And as the final blow dropped his health to zero, he felt a single shred of remorse for the people he would leave behind in real life.
In the real world, the still body of one Kirigaya Kazuto twitched at the same time his virtual avatar shattered into glass, the NerveGear on his head beeping once, but falling silent afterwards. He remained comatose as he was transported to the hospital in which all the people who had fallen victim to Kayaba Akihiko's scheme, but not dead despite the fact that he had died in the virtual world. Not dead like those who unfortunately had their brains cooked like eggs as their family and friends removed the devices that imprisoned them, or even the desolate few who had decided that death was the only way to escape the game. Unknown to all, the world trembled as things began to shift and change.
As the monsters in the dungeon began to reset and those that had been destroyed began to respawn as the final bits of glass coming from the shattered avatar that had once housed the mind of Kirito disintegrated into pixels. As the last shard began to gleam and dematerialize, it paused. The various monsters in the dungeon began to turn back towards the glowing outline of a figure that they had just killed, the artificial intelligences that piloted the bodies of these rudimentary beings registering a new target to hunt. Kirito's avatar materialized, eyes confused, but they sharpened and lost their haze as the first monster charged to attack.
It was dodged almost effortlessly, punched with such force that the monster shattred into polygons before the AI could even register the fact that the body that it piloted was dead. Kirito twisted and fought only with his bare hands, not even hesitating even as he fought several enemies at once. Each monster was blown back with a single punch or kick, defeated with ruthless efficiency. Not with the grace of a player who had hours and hours of experience in a game that allowed them to shamelessly abuse every small advantage they knew about, but with the feral(almost animalistic) savagery of a warrior that had fought with their life on the line. More hours passed as he waged a silent war against the endless waves of monsters in the dungeon he had just perished in, and it would be another day before his enemies were defeated, the last of them shattering into the shards of glass that represented death. A brief fanfare played, and digital confetti materialized, raining down silently from the air. Kirito stretched out a single hand and allowed a single piece of the confetti to land gently on it. He stared at it curiously, even as it disappeared. A screen appeared, in front of the player, with "Congratulations!" written on it in a large, bold font along with a button below, the words "Claim Rewards" labelling it. Kirito stretched a hand out and hesitantly touched the words, jumping slightly when a sword slowly formed in his outstretched hand. A very familiar sword. It looked almost like a typical katana, but the blade shimmered and glowed, flickering betweent the metallic grey of a regular sword and the blood red, almost organic colour of something that had been harvested from a living creature and turned into a weapon.
Kaneki "Kirito" Ken smiled and sheathed the blade that he had been gifted, once by a man that he had once known, the closest thing to a father that he had once had. Now, it had been returned to him in a world where the lines between reality and fiction had been erased, a reward for the blood that he had spilt. His eyes took in the new surroundings that he had found himself in, eyes drifting from the strange bars and text that hovered in the air, following him as he turned and shifted on the spot. Raising a hand, he swiped downwards and stared bemusedly at the small icons that had appeared with his action. Poking experimentally at one with the icon of an evelope(which had been flashing, for some reason), he was rewarded with a single message. He read it out loud, the only sound in the silence of the dungeon.
"Welcome to Sword Art Online, Kaneki Ken. We hope you enjoy your stay." he paused, and scratched his head in confusion.
"I always wondered if there was an afterlife. This is definitely not what I was expecting."
Kaneki spent about an hour looking through the helpful file that had been attached to the singular message in his "inbox". It had every piece of information he lacked, from the basics of this "Sword Art Online" that he had appparently been trapped in to the various "Sword Skills" that this world offered as a form of aid to those who did not have a shred of fighting experience. He tested several of these out, noting with interest that the file's information was correct, from the momentary pauses that the skills enforced on the user after they had been used to the fact that he was only able to use those that were located in the "One-handed sword" category. It was understandable, and from the little knowledge of video games that he had, this would be considered a "balancing feature". What he was still confused about was how convenient all this had been. He, a ghoul who had perished after a long and bloody crusade, had somehow been deposited in this avatar, this "Kirito" with all the knowledge he would need to gain an edge in the fights against the monsters that guarded each level of "Aincrad". It was information that he so desperately needed, and would have taken many hours of searching and gathering to figure out. But it was also information that had been carefully compiled by someone who had known that he would have needed to be updatd on the situation he had been dropped in. It was interesting, at the very least. Also suspicious and overly convenient, but that was the least of Kaneki's worries at this point of time. He could worry about unknown individuals messing around with his life even after he had died after he managed to get out of Sword Art Online. Plus, he smirked, dying a second time wouldn't change much.
He unsheathed his sword, tapping it. When a small screen popped up, he tapped the button labelled "Check" and smiled softly at the description. In a world where he was most likely the only one of his kind(in both the virtual and real world), it was a comfort for something so familiar to follow him into the second battlefield that he would have the misfortune to be forced to step on. Exiting the page and resheathing his sword, the ghoul stretched and experimentally attempted to crack a knuckle. Kaneki was rewarded with a satisfying crack, plus a sharp jab of pain that he had gotten used to a lifetime ago. He frowned. As lifelike as this world had appeared to be, one thing the information booklet had emphasized was that there was no sensation of pain(which was understandable, because who would want to play a game and feel how it was like to be disemboweled or die?), and yet he had just been able to do the same gesture that he had picked up from the person monster that had tried to break him(perhaps he had even suceeded) and had his life ended by a child with an unhealthy obsession with knives. That would be problematic. The main basis of not allowing pain to exist in this world allowed people to sacrifice limbs and take damage without suffering any of the mental backlash that came with it. He would feel every single hit. But then again, he smirked somewhat bitterly, pain was an old friend. He began to walk, following the small map in his "HUD" and pieces of a plan began to whir and fit into place. This was a classic RPG game, with a levelling system that relied on the gaining of experience points and better equipment through fighting. From the battle he had just been in, it was clear that he wasn't at the same "level 1" that all players started at(and a quick check of his statistics confirmed his suspicions). Perhaps the people who had callously dropped him in the game hadn't taken into account how the system would react to a ghoul. He hadn't needed a weapon to destroy those monsters. According to the information he had been sorting out in his brain, the "cursor" above an enemy's head indicated how difficult the fight would be according to the colour. So far, the most he had seen was a light green. In that case, he would have an edge over the other people trapped here.
So what was his goal? Clear the 100 floors of Aincrad and escape with whoever remains when they finally reach the summit? What would happen to him after that? He was a dead man walking, possessing the avatar of someone he didn't know. In the off chance that the individuals who had plucked him from his eternal rest and deposited him here had manufactured the avatar just for him, then he would cease to exist once the game was cleared. But if this body originally belonged to a player, and that player had died, replaced by a monster clad in human flesh, then what would happen when he woke up? How would he explain the new person in the body of someone's brother, someone's son, someone's friend? He chuckled to himself at the situation he was in. It seemed that he could never catch a break. Kaneki, now Kirito to anyone who would meet him in this "game", spoke aloud despite there being nobody to hear him.
"In the end, I guess the universe is telling me I'm better off alone." and in the silence of a dungeon that had claimed the life of a boy who would have changed the fate of the artificial world he had dived into in a different universe, a weary monster walked out of his first battlefield in this new realm, the sole survivor.
Just as it should be. Just as it always has been.
A shorter chapter than usual because I felt that it was apt to end here. This, of course, is only chapter 1. And as with chapter 1 of my other stories, it's meant to set up the stage. Introduce my main player. Prepare the set. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. Leave a comment. I always appreciate advice.
