Disclaimer: Dot Hack belongs to Project .hack and/or the .hack Conglomerate, and the entities involved therein.
That said, The World is a very big place. With twenty million players, the number of stories waiting to be told is literally countless. I am simply here to tell a few of those stories, without receiving any compensation beyond what little recognition my peers may grant me.

Story 3: The Sword Which Has No Name

The Demon King was dead. I opened the treasure chest, and checked the name of the sword that emerged. Joyeuse. A rare among rare items, but this was not the sword I was looking for. The sword I seek has no name.

In my years playing the game, I have seen a great many swords, from the Basic Sword I started with to the Vorpal Blade, from Fair Soul to Souleater. My collection includes Demon Killer and Godslayer, Excalibur and Kusanagi. I once had both Gram and Nothung, until I sold them to a player by the name of Balmung. In combat I use Hrunting, a good sword which has only failed me once, in a rare underwater battle. Many names indeed, both famous and not, belong to the swords I have collected. But none of them is the sword I seek, the sword which has no name.

My quest started when I was new to The World. I had just left the dungeon where I had found a new weapon, the Singing Blade, when I met him. To this day, I am not certain whether he was PC or NPC; his appearance was unlike any other player I have met, but I believe it to be just within the bounds of what is possible using the standard character creation system. He looked like a small Wavemaster, the size of a child. He wore robes of blue, with watery patterns around the hems, and a hood which concealed his face. I didn't see where he came from; in fact, I didn't notice him at all until he spoke. "What is the name of your sword?" he asked me. When I told him, he said, "That is a good sword, but it is not the greatest; rumor speaks of a sword which has no name."

After that, he was silent. I tried to ask him to tell me more, but he did not answer. He just walked off into the shadows of the dungeon, and when I tried to follow, I could not find him. I really had no idea what had just happened, except that it seemed like it might be the start of an event, a quest. Even so, he hadn't exactly given me any information about how to proceed, so I had to look elsewhere for guidance. I posted on the BBS, asking for rumors about swords. And I got answers. Rumor did indeed speak of many swords, and did not name most of them. So my search began, the search for the sword which has no name.

Upon investigation, many of the rumors proved baseless, but others led me onward, sometimes to great discoveries, even to a few weapons which I believe to be unique in the game. I was the one who found the Sword of Ice, in a cave concealed by a raging blizzard. It was I who found Claíomh Solais, hidden in plain sight in the middle of Lia Fail. I was the first to make my way to the heart of the Living Labyrinth, and so I obtained its greatest treasure, the Twilight Sword. Hints in a thread with the unlikely title "The Folly of Bigfeet" led me to a cavern where I found a sword with the equally unlikely name of Nothing. Great - or at least interesting - swords, all of them, but all of them were named. None was the sword I seek, the sword which has no name.

Today, too, I had ended back where I began. Another event completed, another rumor to check off my list, and another level 97 sword to add to my collection. It had been a good day. The information I had bought was accurate, the boss monster had been in the right place, and the treasure had indeed been a sword. That alone made it better in all respects than last week, when I spent all week following cryptic clues with nothing more to show for the effort than a handful of Fortune Wires. That the sword was highly valuable, and that I had earned the goodwill of the pair of experienced adventurers who had joined my party for the search, made this one of the better days this year. But I had not yet found the sword I seek. So I went on, to once more start searching for the sword which has no name.

There are those who tell me that such a sword does not exist - cannot exist - in the game. They say that every item must have a name, that if it did exist someone would have found it by now, that I'm a fool for trusting such an obviously untrustworthy source. They may even be right. It does not matter. I have my Quest. So long as I am here in The World, I will continue to search for the sword which has no name.

Author's Notes: All the swords here but one come from either the .hack games or from literary or historical sources.