Disclaimer: I don't own Sword Art Online or any of its characters. They are all owned by A-1 Pictures, Aniplex USA, and Reki Kawahara.

The cover of this story was made by Slimicee and modified by Myrek to be the right size.

A/N:

Hi.

So I'm trying a bit of an experiment with this story. Whether it's a good idea or not remains to be seen. But here's how it works. I have a Discord server which I'll link below. On this server, I have links to the Google Docs versions of all of the chapters in this story with the permissions set up to allow anyone to comment and suggest edits. This means that you can highlight and comment on specific points in the text.

If you come across a part of this story that doesn't feel right or could be made better somehow, and you are willing to spend a moment or two to explain your idea, feel free to point it out. If you make a suggestion, and I accept it, I'll credit your username with the change at the bottom of the chapter. Any sort of comment though is fine. If you just want to talk about a specific paragraph or line, since this site doesn't allow that functionality with the current review system, you can do it this way.

I'll periodically re-post the older chapters of this story as they evolve. This story is sort of in the middle of a transformation, so you will likely come across moments where the writing style changes, or is inconsistent with the other chapters. This is especially true in the middle of the story.

If you want to just hang out and talk about anything, Discord is also the way to go. Especially for longer, detailed conversations. I've lost track of plenty of reviews and PM's, and I am much more active there than here.

This is the link: A3dTszc

- LeviTamm

"I'm off to practice!" a voice announced suddenly from the other side of his door.

'Sugu?'

Kirito listened silently as the whir of his computer fans filled the air. His sister's footsteps got quieter and quieter down the hallway.

He never answered her. It was alright, though. As far as she knew, he had already linked up and couldn't hear her anyway. It wasn't that far from the truth.

Standing up, he made his way over to his bed and powered up his NerveGear.

He'd use that as an excuse if he were ever pressed on it.

"Link Start."

This world was wonderful! Every single time he saw it, it took his breath away.

...He could do without the massive crowds of people everywhere, though.

Kirito sighed. It was to be expected. This wasn't the beta test anymore. There were a lot more players now that the full game had been released. This was also the main reason why Kirito found himself navigating through back alleys rather than main roads. It was just too crowded.

He had his whole day planned out. He needed to start levelling as soon as possible. He could already notice how weak and sluggish his body was in comparison to the one he had had in the beta. All of his levels had been rolled back.

He needed that strength back. That speed. And he needed to make sure that he reclaimed his old reputation and position on the leaderboards. It was a trivial thing, but he had been one of the beta's top players—

Just then, and he had no idea how it happened, he miscalculated the position of his feet. His right foot struck the heel of his left as he was running, and he stumbled. Kirito panicked but managed to catch himself before tripping outright.

He slowed to a walk and made sure that his face showed none of the inner turmoil that he felt, playing it off as if nothing had happened.

He had almost publicly embarrassed himself in front of a street full of people. He glanced surreptitiously at the players around him as he continued on, thanking God himself that nobody spared him a second glance. Nobody seemed to have noticed.

It could have been so much worse.

The alley ended, and he made a right turn onto another annoyingly busy street, where he continued at a more sedate pace. Still internally mortified, he didn't dare start running again. Not yet. And nobody on the street paid him any attention. He was just another player minding his own business.

Kirito only started running again after his embarrassment had finally died down and he had rounded the next corner into another alleyway.

Because he had been walking, not running, and didn't stand out as a result, the red-haired man on that very same street never singled him out as a beta tester, and they both continued on their separate ways without ever knowing what might have been.

Upon signing into the game for the first time as a new player, everyone received 500 cor to pick up their starting supplies. It wasn't that much―only enough for a new player to get a decent setup. It was about fifteen to twenty Boars worth.

Kirito used his to pick up everything a solo player like him needed to start grinding. But he made a bit of an unconventional decision as well. Rather than picking up any food, he picked up some cooking supplies instead. The monsters he would be killing dropped raw meat occasionally, and he didn't need the Cooking skill to successfully cook basic dishes like that, so he wouldn't have to leave the hunting grounds to restock on food. This would save travel time in the long run.

Eating was xp waste, after all.

Efficiency was everything in MMOs. So Kirito intended to cut every last corner that he could. If he had the ability, he wouldn't be eating anything at all. But the hunger pangs generated by the NerveGear were too powerful to ignore.

After picking up his supplies, Kirito glanced down the open road. He had used up the last of his money, and it was about time to get some more.

He was ready to play the game.

It had only taken him about 10 minutes to get out of the city and into an empty hunting ground. It seemed as if most of the players currently in-game were newer, and hadn't decided to start exploring the combat system quite yet. They would, eventually, but until then, he had almost no competition for decent spots.

The lack of people in the area was a fantastic sight for a solo player like him. Being alone was way better than having to tolerate somebody else nearby.

Sharing a hunting ground was xp waste.

Kirito took a deep breath and sighed.

It was time to start grinding.

When a blue light suddenly appeared in front of him, he was able to recognize it for what it was immediately. A monster spawn. Wasting no time at all, his sword glowed red as he activated a Sword Skill, and he lashed out.

His first kill in-game, a Dire Wolf, didn't even have the chance to fully form before it had shattered into polygons.

Kirito smiled.

He had spawn killed it.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Kirito asked as he stared in disbelief at the player in front of him.

He hated crashers. He had been grinding for some time by himself, minding his own business, when all of a sudden, some guy had come up out of nowhere and had stolen his kill.

Crashing was the art of observing a lone player fighting a group of monsters and figuring to yourself, 'there's room for me here too,' then arriving unannounced, and immediately aggroing half of the monsters in the area. This would utterly ruin the experience rate of the player you had just intruded upon, and make them hate you.

That player is then said to have been crashed.

It bothered him a lot, to say the least. Getting crashed. But normally he wasn't a very confrontational person, so Kirito had decided at first to simply move a distance away and give up his spot without a single word of protest. It was annoying, but he had ultimately decided to just take the hit and move on.

Dealing with and chewing out crashers was xp waste.

But then the guy had followed him. Like, really followed him. At an unreasonably short distance. Not even trying to be discreet about it. It was as if the crasher had taken it upon himself to count just how many hairs were on the back of Kirito's head.

Only then had the crasher's antics finally crossed the threshold of annoyance required for Kirito to spin around and deal with him.

"Something wrong, guy?" the crasher replied in a lazy tone, from less than a foot away.

Kirito could almost smell his breath.

"What do you want?" Kirito asked, fed up with the situation.

There was a moment of silence.

"Are you comin' onto me?" The crasher asked in exchange.

Kirito's eye twitched.

'So that's how it is, then.'

It was one of those guys. Someone who just messed with people for no reason at all. Except for their own entertainment, anyway.

A troll.

Kirito had come across a lot of them in the past. Both in other games and the beta test of this one. His go-to strategy in dealing with them was to ignore them and leave. Most of the time, anyway. But even he had a threshold of tolerance. If they kept at it, he'd use his other strategy.

Kirito pinched the bridge of his nose.

He knew this routine and didn't want any part of it.

There were two types of crashers, in his experience. New players who genuinely saw some lone player apparently being surrounded and attacked from all sides, and deciding to intervene, thinking they were being helpful, and the trolls, who did it deliberately just to try to be as annoying as possible to everyone.

Kirito couldn't convince himself to truly hate the new players that did it. Even when they had the balls to crash him, steal half his kills, and then ask questions like 'are you okay?', or when they demanded to be thanked for doing so. They pissed him right off when they did that, no doubt, but he couldn't truly hate them because they were new, and didn't seem to understand what they were doing.

But the trolls…

The ones who did it on purpose…

"You can have this spot, I don't care," Kirito spoke through gritted teeth. "Even though there is nobody anywhere around us, and you could have chosen any other spot in the area... you can have the exact square foot of land that I've been standing on if you really want. But I'm going to go over there if you're over here," Kirito stated with narrowed eyes as he pointed some distance away.

"So don't follow me," Kirito finally turned around and started walking.

'If he does one more thing,' he thought to himself. Things would get messy.

Kirito arrived at his new spot and glanced back in the direction of the other player. Seeing him fighting his own Dire Wolf for once while facing in the opposite direction made Kirito sigh in relief.

It would seem that he had gotten the message across.

Sometimes, very rarely, you could reason with a troll.

You usually had to reason with a sword in your hand and a violent underlying threat, but sometimes… you could do it.

Kirito travelled a bit further out anyway. Just to be on the safe side. The greater the distance between the two of them, in his opinion, the better.

A few more wolves suddenly spawned in the plains in front of him and Kirito immediately engaged the closest one. His aim was a bit off on the first skill he unleashed, putting its HP into the red rather than one-shotting it. He had aimed for one of its weak points, but it had twisted just a tiny amount to avoid the critical hit, totally by chance, at the last instant.

'No problem,' he thought. It happened sometimes. He'd just finish it off with his followup swing―

The monster shattered before Kirito's sword connected.

For just a moment though, he had seen it.

A throwing knife buried hilt-deep into the forehead of the wolf.

His wolf.

Kirito didn't get all the xp for that kill. Only part of it. When multiple players ganged up on a monster and killed it, xp would be shared amongst everyone involved no matter how weak the monster had been or how little was given out upon its death.

Kirito's share had been cut in half. He took a deep breath and looked up towards the sky as he considered his current situation again.

He made a decision. Yes, he was willing to spend the rest of the day as an orange player. His kill had been stolen for the last time. It was time to implement his other strategy for dealing with trolls.

"You mad, bro?!" the crasher shouted with a cheerful grin plastered across his face.

Another sliver of the player's health was shaved off by a furious, glancing blow.

Kirito thought about the question for a moment.

…

Yeah.

Yeah, he was pretty mad.

The crasher had reduced Kirito's levelling efficiency by a few percentage points. Of course, he was mad.

But Kirito didn't understand this player's confidence. The crasher had yet to do any damage to him. He had anticipated Kirito's violent and immediate response to his actions and had managed to block the first strike, but he had been unable to land any attacks of his own so far.

As soon as the battle had started, Kirito's cursor had changed from green to orange.

There were three known types of cursors that a player could have. Green, orange and orange. Two of those types of cursors looked and functioned almost identically in every way and were even named the same thing, but they differed just enough to be classified as separate types.

It definitely didn't cause any confusion.

All players started with green cursors. If they attacked another player or committed any action deemed a crime in-game, they would change to orange for a period of time depending on what that crime was.

If that crime happened to be killing a green player, however, they would receive the other type of orange cursor that looked no different from the normal one, but that would have different conditions for getting rid of it.

Kirito's cursor was the normal orange variant at the moment, and it'd return to normal after some time had passed if he walked away now. But that wasn't happening.

This was a fight to the finish. And Kirito was going to kill this guy.

Tolerating a belligerent player was xp waste.

He had experienced both ends of PKing in the beta and knew what the consequences would be for his actions. Permanent orange cursors reverted to green only after 24 hours had passed and the player had logged out once.

It was inconvenient having to play the game with one, but it'd be so worth it after he finally sent this idiot back to spawn with nothing but a set of baggy clothes and a handful of pocket change.

When a player died, they were sent back to the starting city with just a fraction of their cor and exactly none of their items, leaving them with nothing but their starting gear. Everything else just dropped to the ground, ready to be picked up by another player.

There was only one rule when things came down to it in this new world. Do whatever you want, and PK anyone that says otherwise. Might makes right in Sword Art Online.

Casually, Kirito batted away another telegraphed and easily readable swing from the other player.

This fight was not at all close, or even fair. The crasher was just barely escaping his attacks. Decent at dodging, but that was all he seemed to be any good at. His offence was lacking, to say the least.

There were a ton of obvious signs that this player was a noob. He had allocated both of his starting skill slots to offensive skills, rather than selecting a support like Searching or Hiding. It was a common mistake for newer players who didn't yet understand that that was bad practice.

Blade Throwing and One-Handed Sword was a bad starting setup in the long term, even if it had advantages in the short term. It would limit the hunting grounds that the player would have access to since they were unable to either hide from enemies or detect them in advance. This would make them much more susceptible to traps and ambushes, and force them to remain in the beginner hunting grounds for much longer than they otherwise would have.

An alternate offensive skill should only be considered after unlocking more skill slots at higher levels. You only started with two, so you had to be careful with which ones you selected. Because if you changed your mind and decided to swap out an old skill for a new one, you would lose all progress in it.

Experienced players understood these concepts well. But after glancing at the massive holes in this player's defence, Kirito was able to see that clearly, this player wasn't very experienced. Which was a shame. A part of him had actually been impressed at the accuracy behind that blade throw from earlier―the one that had stolen his kill.

This crasher had a lot to learn though.

The player dodged another sequence of Kirito's sword skills, before getting into another blade lock. The familiar sound of two blades crashing into each other echoed throughout the area, and a set of sparks were produced as they scraped against each other after the impact.

Kirito almost grinned.

This guy just didn't learn.

He punched the crasher in the face with his free hand, taking great satisfaction in wiping away the smug smirk that had just been there a moment ago.

This was the third time Kirito had done that, and still, the crasher had not figured out how to stop it from happening.

A fight couldn't be won like this. You needed more than just defence and dodging. And you wouldn't win by trying to get into awkward blade locks that you saw all the time in anime.

Kirito's sword glowed a bright violet as he queued up another skill. He fully expected it to be his final move.

To win, you had to attack.

The end of the fight was marked by the sound of shattering glass.

Kirito let out a content sigh. It had been so satisfying, taking all of that guy's gear and money. He'd almost call it therapeutic. PKing on lower floors, especially in the early game, could be very lucrative. Players dropped pretty much everything in their inventory when they died, gear and money. Unless they happened to be in a party at the time, anyway. Then there was an exception.

Their items would be transferred into a shared party inventory instead, which allowed everyone to get their stuff back upon respawning as long as there was a single surviving party member. Most players as a result, especially early on, would form these parties due to such clear and obvious advantages. Especially with PKing being so incentivized early on. When you killed a party-less player in the early game, you essentially doubled your assets, as everyone had the same initial wealth. It wasn't until later on in the game, when players started to specialize and wealth inequality started to kick into high gear where there existed some players too poor to kill.

But that player hadn't been in a party. He had lost everything he had had, and Kirito had taken it all.

Kirito smiled. Therapeutic was the perfect word for it. It was karma. It was simply what that player deserved for trying to annoy him like that. For being a new player trying to look down on someone with more experience. For trying to steal his kills.

It was an unwritten rule amongst experienced players in MMOs everywhere. You don't do that. People that did were killed so fast in the beta by the front line clearers. They had been ruthless about it too, often humiliating the perpetrators in some fashion first.

Kirito had actually been polite to that guy, all things considered, giving him a single chance to leave on his own accord. Not many elite beta testers would have given him that same chance.

Maybe that idiot would even learn something from this experience.

Kirito wasn't disturbed again until the sky started turning orange and the sun started setting. A part of him had expected that crasher to show up again to try and bother him, but thankfully, he never did. Trolls were usually repeat-offenders, so this came as a relief.

Kirito had levelled up in the meantime and was well on his way to level 3, now. Which wasn't bad for a single day. That PK had given him a surprisingly good chunk of experience. He didn't intend to go PKing new players any time soon, though. He rarely PKed at all in the first place, only making exceptions in a handful of cases.

The extra experience was nice, though.

He had left one of his two skill slots open. He had it narrowed down between either Searching or Hiding but he hadn't figured out which to choose yet. Both were extremely useful, and he would probably end up with both in the end, either way, but he had decided to wait until he had a long-term goal decided before picking up his second skill.

There was just too much to consider in the meantime.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a loud ringing sound echoed across the plains. It was periodic, and he couldn't quite pinpoint its direction. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. Before he could determine what it was, he was enveloped by a blue light, and forcefully teleported.

That announcement had utterly ruined his state of mind.

'Kayaba.'

It all made sense. Everything he had said was possible. A death game with 10,000 players. If anyone in the world could pull that off, it was Akihiko Kayaba.

If you died even once in the game, you died for real.

It did not take him very long at all to understand the implications of this.

He had killed someone earlier. Just a few hours ago. That person, that crasher, whoever it had been, had never opened his eyes again. Had never woken up. A few moments after their fight had concluded, that person's brain had been fried by the NerveGear.

...All while Kirito had gloated over the spoils of his victory and celebrated the player's death.

That person was dead.

Kirito had grinned and cheered.

He paused for several moments to let these revelations fully sink in.

He felt sick.

Suddenly, the crowd around him started to panic. There were shouts of anger, desperation, and disbelief, all directed at the spot Akihiko Kayaba's giant avatar had once been. And the sound dragged Kirito out of his thoughts.

This was real.

A text box suddenly opened in his field of view. It declared that he was an orange player in a safe zone and that the city guards would mobilize if he didn't leave the area immediately. He had seen the message before in the beta. It was a warning given out to orange players that tried to enter a city's safe zone. They weren't allowed in. They couldn't set foot in any main city on any floor without being attacked by guards.

Those guards were strong, too. And they kept respawning. If he stayed where he was now, he'd die. Without a doubt. Guards were the only monster in the game that could damage a player in a safe zone.

Faced with this imminent danger, he forced his emotions to the back of his mind and tried his best to look at his situation objectively. He knew that if he hesitated now, he would die.

He needed to get out of the city.

While the crowd was in hysterics, Kirito spun and bolted towards the closest city gate.

Improvements:

Haley Dill, Eiri Fllyn