The world was everything I had wanted and more. The visuals were not just amazing; they were real. I could not tell the difference between this world and the one I had just left. The grass smelt the exact same as it did back home, and the breeze tickled my skin the same way it always had.

The only difference was the apparent fantasy landscape before me.

Sinon and I had both agreed we'd pick the same usernames we normally have, so locating him wasn't too difficult, but when we first saw each other, it was much more surprising than I thought it'd be.

Sinon had bright blue hair and bluebell eyes. His features were very feminine and the locks of hair fell to shoulder length. He looked borderline cute, even. It was almost surreal to finally place a face to the name. For the longest time, I had only pictured him as his profile picture, but here he was, standing in front of me.

I mean, I knew it wasn't his real face (who could have that shade of eyes or natural blue hair?), but it was close enough.

Something about him, though, made me pause for a moment. I felt like I had seen him before somehow; like something was off and I just couldn't connect the dots. Eventually, I brushed it off as nothing.

My appearance was something to note, too. Since our identities are going to be revealed in about a month anyways, I didn't mind setting my avatar to be rather similar to my actual visage. Only a few minor details were changed; specifically, my facial structure and eye color. No major differences.

Sinon opened his mouth and then paused as if to think of what to say.

"Y-you, uh, you look good. Nice avatar, I mean," he settled on.

"What? Oh, uh, you too. I hadn't even heard your voice before this, so this is pretty amazing to me."

"This isn't my real voice. The voice generated is based on the vocal cords of your avatar, not your real life voice."

"Oh, right. Sorry," I apologized. Yeah, that was pretty dumb of me. Don't know why I didn't think of that.

He just coughed and turned his gaze in a different direction and decided on focusing on the task at hand.

"Okay, I think we should start with the town to the south of here. The map is only partially completed, but if we get there quickly enough, we should be able to beat the other players to the low-level monsters," he said reasonably.

"Alright, sounds like a plan to me. Are you thinking we should grind this game as much as possible before our levels reset?" I asked. If Sinon would help me complete my goal, my progress through this game would accelerate tenfold.

Sinon just smiled and narrowed his glistening blue eyes as he looked at me.

"That's the plan. Let's show the other beta testers we're nobody to mess with."

No wonder he's my best friend.

We were in Urbus, a city on the second floor of Aincrad, when I realized just how little I was remembering from the original game. I hadn't even noticed how much I was forgetting. Not a single floor monster was one I recognized.

Fortunately, that was the whole purpose of applying for the beta. I'd need actual experience to handle the real thing properly.

We were clearing floors like it was no one's business. Only a few other players got near our level of speedrunning. For whatever reason, Sinon was just as content as I was to spend every single waking moment of the day and night grinding for experience and clearing the bosses. I tried not to flinch with the occasional death, but it was hard not to. If this were a month later, that respawnable death would've been a permanent one.

Sinon and I explored just about every square inch of each floor while defeating monsters. We agreed that battle was not the only important aspect of clearing this game. Exploration was well-rewarded in Sword Art Online, as well. In fact, despite not telling him or intending on it myself, we stumbled upon the Martial Arts skill NPC. He tasks the player with splitting a boulder in half using only their palms in order to receive the skill. If the player fails this task, they must keep the quest failure's trademark whiskers on their face for the entire game's duration.

Traditionally, one must use a monster whose spawn rates are increased during the quest to split the rock and receive the Martial Arts skill. However, Sinon noticed another way of completing the quest before I could even propose the idea. The NPC and the boulder are both on the summit of a very tall mountain on the second floor, so Sinon suggested just pushing the boulder off the mountain.

Lo and behold, after about a thirty minutes of struggling to make the rock move, it had budged enough that we could drop it over the edge. It fell down the cliff so far that it left render distance. We waited almost a minute before a "Quest Completed" notification appeared and we sighed in relief.

It was right about then that I realized just how smart Sinon really is. He somehow thought of everything. There was a time when I was fighting (and losing) against the second floor boss, Baran the General Taurus.

Sinon's blade-throwing skill made him capable of staying far away from the boss' attacks, preventing its status effect "Numbing Detonation" from affecting him. I, on the other hand, had to keep being bailed out as I couldn't dash away quickly enough to prevent being stunned for three seconds at a time.

He eventually finished off the boss from a distance while I just sat there, unable to do anything. It was impressive, actually. His intellectual prowess was only outmatched by his in-game dexterity.

I wasn't doing too badly for myself, either. Given that it was the beta, I was okay with spreading out my skill slots on various different weapons just to try them out. However, one weapon in particular really caught my attention.

The spear was a class of weapons that was covered very lightly during the anime and manga, only being seen in a few instances throughout the entire series. Here, though? It was an entire fully-fledged weapon with sword skills and everything.

I found myself enjoying using it as my main more often than not. My style of attacking led to quick jabs and rotating around my enemy to keep it on its guard. By staying far enough away that melee attacks could not land, I was able to finish off enemies from a distance without sustaining any major damage. I decided it would be great for the day when the actual game comes along. Since the spear is a mid range weapon, I was mostly safe from monster onslaughts. The only real danger are monsters with longer range, superior speed, and area of effect attacks.

Sinon mostly focused on ranger-like skills, which confused me greatly since this game is more about the melee-class than anything else. Magic didn't exist and neither did bows. However, Sinon still handled himself rather gracefully with throwing blades skills and dagger attacks. But, on the other hand, it felt like something was missing, like he hadn't met his weapon affinity yet… That being said, he was still an insanely powerful fighter. His strengths outweighed his weaknesses by a lot. And his aim was certainly remarkable.

Fighting the third floor boss was quite a challenge for us.

Nerius the Evil Treant was a gigantic tree that would spawn a plethora of enemies that could chip away at our HP while the boss itself stays away at a distance. We had to wait for it to get within attacking range and slowly beat down at its health until it died. Clearing out the sapling sentinels took any annoying amount of effort as neither Sinon nor I were well prepared to handle crowd control.

Fortunately, all of them were rather weak individually, and dodging Nerius' attacks wasn't particularly difficult. All we had to do was camp it out.

But then something happened that genuinely scared me: We ran out of healing items.

Sinon and I, the game's current leading players, the ones who had literally created our own two person guild and swept the floors clean of all their resources, ran out of freakin' health potions. It was then that I realized we weren't as invincible as we thought we were.

The boss' AI, as if sensing weakness, suddenly caught on to our plight and began spamming out minions. Fighting the minor saplings would normally be fine, but given how many of them there were, taking damage would be a necessity to deal with them. And, just in a stroke of pure bad luck, the boss cycle went into a stage where it would be much too high above the ground for us to even hope to damage it.

We were flooded with monsters and Sinon was forced to use melee attacks; his least favorite and most inexperienced manner of fighting. As I mentioned before, the disadvantages of a spear aren't many, but they are prevalent. A spear is not suited for fending off against great groups of foes. I, like Sinon, was immediately overwhelmed.

Not to mention the boss' attack pattern of course decided to grant it greater and more effective damage circles, meaning dodging left the equation. Without healing potions and such a low level of the Battle Healing skill, our fate was sealed.

It all started and ended in just a few moments. We were overtaken before we had even realized it was happening. Our formation just broke down after such an obvious breach in our plans.

Sinon and I slumped against the inn's wall once we had respawned. The other beta testers in the nearby area even had the gall to snicker at our demise; one glare from the both of us shut them up, but it was still pretty obvious our defeat meant a huge tarnishing to our reputation.

You see, Sinon and I sort of had a bit of… prestige tied to our names. The guild we created wasn't one we named; others came up with the idea for us, and we just adopted the idea.

We were called the "Arctic Knights". Somehow it developed from Sinon's strikingly bluebell hair and my midnight black, which led to "Arctic Night", and then "Arctic Knights". Haha, very clever. Regardless, we liked it enough that we made it official, despite not really having a purpose for a guild. It did give us a shared-ish inventory and a common vault, so that was useful, I suppose.

Anyways, the guild's name wasn't doing too great when it was being dragged through the dirt and mud like it was after our misfortune during the third floor's boss fight. Then again, I didn't exactly see anyone else doing any better… It must have been that their pedestal of us being invincible floor clearers was sort of torn down after that mishap.

Surprisingly, Sinon was more down about it than I was, even going so far as to log off for a while to think things over. Heck, I was the one treating it like every death was a real one, and even I didn't feel as harshly affected. That being said, I did need to sit down and think about why we failed.

While Sinon was out taking a much needed 'rest', I was sitting up at the inn room's table going through everything that had just happened.

Somehow, all of our defenses were crumpled with a few lucky hits, so we clearly had a gap in our strategy. Something was wrong, and we needed to improve before attempting the boss fight again.

I looked over the events and tried to make a connection. It was more than just our health potions running out; we were close enough to winning that that wouldn't've mattered (although it was necessary to plan for in the future). No, something else was awry.

I thought until I placed my finger on it. It was our arrogance, to an extent, which led to our downfall. We were overleveled for the dungeon, to put it very bluntly. We assumed the amount of potions we had would be plenty to take on the floor boss, and when it wasn't, we assumed our advanced skill trees of our weapons would pull through for us. They didn't.

Had we focused too much on one particular type of weapon when a very simple concept such as crowd control would rather easily take us down for the count? Probably, but that doesn't necessarily mean we should start spreading out our skill trees too much. I knew our simplistic formation was enough for most things, but I'd have to start planning for more than just one enemy at a time if things were to keep going like this.

So that brings me to Sinon's part. Is there anything he can get that would help him stay out of the monsters' ranges and would, preferably, have AoE damage?

I pulled up my skill menu and spread out my search as far as I could throughout the throwing blades' tree. Many common techniques were visible to me, such as Single Shot and Spinning Strike, but most of the tree was unavailable to me. So, instead, I searched for spear skills with similar properties, and there it was: Fire Whirl. A skill I had completely neglected due to its low stats was listed as an area of effect move. Not to mention its blatantly obvious type advantage over plant-based enemies such as Nerius' sapling minions.

After spending a skill point in the category, a few more options branched off from that move. They were exactly what I was looking for! The AoE of Fire Whirl was combined with the piercing effects of thrust-based spear moves and created the beautiful amazingness that was Converging Storm. It was wind elemental, so it wouldn't be weak against Treant, and its range was six meters. Although the activation time was rather long, upgrading that would only take a bit of time. It was the perfect move for clearing this boss, and I felt more ready than ever.

But there was still an issue at hand: Sinon. He had gone ever since we had lost a few hours before, and his profile still displayed "Offline". The only thing I could do was log off and text him through the chat app on my phone.

When I left the NerveGear, it almost felt surreal, as if the world I had woken up to wasn't the real one and the one online was reality instead.

I stood up and almost fell from the sudden rush of blood throughout my body. These were common symptoms of the NerveGear according to journalists online. Something about how your brain is accustomed to motion before your body is, so dizzy spells aren't uncommon after excessive usage of the console.

Trudging over to my desk, I picked up my phone and opened the app. I clicked on Sinon, who was first in the list as he was the only one I really talked to on there. I was about to type out a text asking if he was doing okay, but my finger slipped and I accidentally tapped on the Call button. A video call commenced and the phone began to ring. I was so surprised by this sudden development that I almost dropped the phone before I could terminate the connection.

However, I was too late. Sinon accepted the call. My blood ran cold. Damn frozen.

I covered up the camera as quickly as possible, and it was pretty apparent he had, too, as all I saw was a ceiling fan. The only thing I heard was a loud squeal before the call ended.

There were very few moments in Shino's life when she was genuinely surprised. After pledging to become strong enough to protect her mother, she hadn't exactly had the opportunity. Being caught off guard didn't exactly come with the territory, so she hadn't had much of a chance, but when Deruta, her online crush whom she was slowly falling for, called her directly right after she had taken a shower, she was considerably surprised. But that didn't take the cake. No, what did was her stumbling to grab her phone from her nightstand and accidentally tapping the "Accept Call" button.

It felt like her life literally ended for an instant. Fortunately for her, her phone wasn't pointed at her face, so her identity was safe. She reached over to discreetly shut off her phone before any harm could be done. When the whole ordeal was over, it felt like she had aged a year in those few seconds. She breathed heavily for a moment.

Why was it that she decided to build up this false persona of hers, again? Why was it that, when her only friend in the whole world called her, she scrambled to keep up that facade of lies she displayed to him. It wasn't like he was completely honest with her, either, but that didn't make her feel better about it. The gap of disconnect between her online and real lives felt too wide to cross for Deruta. She didn't want to ruin the friendship they had by revealing her real identity with him, or at the very least telling him the truth about her gender.

Would Deruta react badly? She wasn't sure, and she didn't want to risk it. But, oh how she longed to tell him. She knew he lived very close because he had directly stated he lived in Saitama. Her new apartment was on the outskirts of Saitama, so she very much was in range of him. It was just… she could imagine how one might not like a sudden change in a relationship they are heavily involved in. She had enough foresight to understand that.

But they couldn't continue their lives like this. He had told her a few times about his social life at school and at home, and how she was his best (and only) friend besides his dad. She felt similarly. If they were to pursue this… this thing, then she'd have to crack the truth to him eventually.

Shino didn't want to think about that anymore, so she tossed those thoughts aside and decided to look at what Deruta had wanted from her.

"Dang it, I'm so sorry, Sinon. I didn't mean to press the call button," he said nervously. Shino looked on at the message in curiosity.

"Uh, it's okay. What did you need from me, anyway?" she replied.

"I'm really sorry. Uh, I meant to ask how you were feeling. You left in a rush earlier, I wasn't sure if you'd be doing okay," Deruta wrote.

Shino paused. He was worried about her? Suddenly, she felt much warmer than she had before.

"Thanks for worrying about me, but I'm doing alright. I just needed a few to think things through," she responded.

It was then that Shino wished she hadn't hung up on him. She wished he could be right there for her, without the inconvenience of the screen to hinder them. But, when she went to call him, she found herself shaking. If she was too nervous to call him, could she really reveal her identity?

Shino sighed. They couldn't be like that, anyway. He wouldn't feel the same, even if he knew she was a girl. He was already fixated on that one girl from his school…

I cursed myself for screwing up that badly. I knew that he was in a volatile state from our loss earlier that day, so of course he wouldn't be "all right". And the video chat scare just about ended my chances of comforting him. My fingers scrunched the bridge of my nose and I breathed in a deep sigh and then let it out.

Ahhh, crap.

I laid back on my bed frame. What the heck even just happened, anyways?

When I called him, I heard an audible "squeal" before he hung up. It felt almost… feminine. Maybe he had a sister in the room? Well, no, when I asked him, he said he lived alone. What does that entail? That he lied to me?

It's not like he's obligated to tell me everything about his life, as much as it sort of hurts to think he doesn't trust me. Then again, it's not like I've told him much about myself, either.

Sinon said he was doing fine, and I told him I'd be there when he was ready to talk, but our conversation ended there.

It was times like these when I wish we had the courage to speak to each other face-to-face. But, alas, that step in our relationship won't come for a while, and until then, we just have to manage. That being said, I sort of have a cutoff date, don't I? It was July 26th, and the beta test was ending in less than twenty days. We were almost halfway through the entire thing, and I kind of had a talk to make with Sinon, didn't I?

I can't let him buy the real game and get trapped in there like I will be. I have to warn him, but I can't be obvious about it. If he knows that it's a death trap, he won't let me walk into it myself, and even if I do, he'll probably do something dumb like jump in with me.

That's not a risk I'm willing to take. I know that he's already planning on buying the game when it releases on August 21st. Beta testers have a "priority queue" for pre-purchasing the game, and he told me he had already placed his preorder.

I have to make up something. Maybe a lie that'll prevent him from playing the game for at least a day. If it gets that far, then he'll be safe from the death game, and I'll be free to change SAO's fate on my own.

But how could I possibly convince him?

I kicked my feet against my mattress as I thought. There was just way too much pressure on me thanks to this. Was I even ready for this? Should I tell my dad before I go? I wasn't sure exactly what would go on in there, so the danger was very real, foresight or not.

Plus, Sinon wouldn't be there to back me up.

The more and more I thought about it, the more I realized that Sinon and I were inseparable. WIthout him, what was I?

I was just one half of a whole.

After a short nap, I pulled out my phone and contacted Sinon again. He was actually already online, and when I sent a text, he responded almost immediately.

"Hey, how are you feeling now?" I asked, preemptively expecting the worst.

"Hey, Deruta, sorry for overreacting earlier. I was just really upset over that loss; I'm doing better now. Do you want to play?" he sent literally moments after I asked the question. He must have been typing that already, and it was just a coincidence that we both sent it at the same time.

"Oh, I'm glad you're feeling better. Sure, let's play!" I replied.

And thus continued our playthrough of the game.

I first saw Kirito after we had cleared the fourth floor. Thanks to the break we had taken for a day or so, we had given ample time for the other guilds to catch up. Although it wasn't the greatest feeling, we couldn't deny that having more teammates during the boss fights was emphatically better.

Kirito was becoming a bit of a legend himself. The legendary swordsman, spearman, and hunter were names spread all throughout the guilds. It seemed being solo and solo-adjacent players made us some sort of local myths. Heck, walking through the townsquare became near impossible without recognition. It was annoying after a while, really, but Sinon appeared to enjoy it. He didn't want to admit it, but I could tell by the way he blushed when someone called us out.

Kirito, though? He was just a different breed entirely. The speed in which he fought, the power he wielded in each strike, it was insane. To put it very simply, he was strong. Despite having the disadvantages of a solo player, he pulled through and single-handedly rivaled full-on guilds.

Sinon and I, however, had already decided we would become the very best, and having Kirito share the spotlight wasn't a part of that dream.

The actual amount of time I slept went from seven hours per day to five. I played for fifteen hours straight one time, and Sinon wasn't much different. He was not only following me in that, but he was one-upping me in just about every facet of tenacity I had.

Our team dynamic was really becoming unbeatable. We cleared floor five in two days.

Not only was our strength growing, but our resources and strategies were, too. By pillaging the entire fifth floor, we gained access to a truckload of new quests. And, once again, we scoured the whole floor. Not a single bit of those ancient ruins were left untouched.

Each quest was fairly easy with our systematic method of searching. If it required some sort of item, we'd find that item on a previous floor or later on in our process of raiding the whole place. And we were not picky with what we fought, either. Be it field boss or low level slimes, we fought them all. Every drop of experience was well-worth the effort.

And this continued. Sinon and I, having received our rhythm back again, cleared floor after floor, with only a select few beta testers being able to catch up with us and fight the boss alongside. I may or may not have used some of my future knowledge to boost the speed of our progress. Most of the floors weren't even mentioned once in the anime, and what I knew from the manga and light novels only covered so much. Some stuff was even exclusive to some game footage I saw online just in passing. Anything and everything I could recall from before SAO disappeared was vital. I had already mapped out the entire anime on paper, and each tidbit I could scrounge up from the depths of my brain were written down, as well. However, my knowledge wasn't as reliable as I thought it was.

A good example is the fourth floor. Although I clearly remembered it being basically an island filled with water everywhere, here in the beta, it was a desert. No, much better to label it as the badlands. Quite the opposite of what I remembered. That instantly threw all of the information about the game out the window. Now that I knew it was failable, I couldn't rely on it as much. Same for the procedurally generating Cardinal System quests – those were borderline random.

Sinon did not know this, but I was slowly collapsing under the pressure. I had to have everything planned for, all of the game had to be memorized before the service version went live, otherwise thousands of people would die. I needed to have all of my strategies designed and each and every single inconsistency and contingency plotted against. I had to break up Laughing Coffin before they could grow to power – or should I? If they become the primary source of PKs, then at least my foes will be predictable. See? These were the things I needed to plan for. If I went into the game without my plans written like scripture…

Things would grow very messy very quickly.

This was like the hardest test I had ever studied for in my entire life, but this time, if I failed, everyone died, and it'd all be my fault.

The thoughts going through my mind were not new ones. These had all appeared right when I had decided to go through with joining the game, but that didn't make them less intimidating. I had less than fourteen days to finish everything, and even if we followed the trend of two days per floor, we'd only complete up 'til floor thirteen. Kirito himself made it floor ten during the beta test, so I wasn't really accomplishing anything too great by doing that, and even then, it'd really be pushing us. Both Sinon and I seemed more and more burnt out after the whole grinding ordeal.

I would not force Sinon to keep this up with me. As far as he knows, this is just a game, and all of this is just for fun. Tireless work does not constitute fun. I knew my results would suffer greatly without him alongside me, but it wasn't worth causing my best (and only) friend pain.

And so I said what I was dreading. We were on the eighth floor when I finally worked up the courage to apologize. We were mapping out the forests with our cartography skill (a very easy method of power leveling that, by the way) when I popped the question.

"Hey Sinon?" I asked.

"Yeah, what is it?" he responded without turning to face me.

The trees above us covered most of the natural light, but there was just barely too little canopy to block all sunlight. It meant a cool and humid atmosphere along with plenty of shade. Very nice for the hot summer days Cardinal was generating.

I sucked in some air and said it as quickly as possible. "You don't have to keep playing with me if you don't want to-" My words were stopped by a finger that blocked my lips from moving.

"Don't say another word, Deruta, I know what this is about. You were going to say that you think we're playing too hard and you want me to take a break, right?" Well, not my exact wording, but yeah, that was the gist of it. "Then you shouldn't worry. I signed up for this whole 'become the very best' thing willingly, I'm not about to quit on you."

I almost choked on my spit.

"W-what?" I asked in surprise.

He sighed before continuing. "It's obvious how much pressure you feel like you're under, but I just want to tell you that you're not alone in here. You've got me, and I'm not going to abandon you."

…

"We're going to become the best players before the game even starts, right? That was the promise we made. Then let's do it. Together. Okay?" He held out his hand to shake with mine.

I felt tears pooling in my eyes as I accepted the hand.

Somehow, without even knowing half of the crisis I was in, he made everything better.