[Author's Note: I've realised my foolishness in underestimating just how staggeringly large 3.5 million people is. That number had been based off of similar statistics for launch day purchases of games like GTA V, but even if it could possibly be accurate to the number of people who would be online for a game as canonically ground-breaking as SAO, it's too much for me to write around (even EVE online, a real MMORPG that only has one server for all its players had a historic high of ~60000 concurrent players), so I've had to go back and reduce the numbers by an order of magnitude.

10000 people, on the other hand, is like living in a small town where everybody knows, or at least knows someone who knows everyone else, and is a number that in my mind would have participated in the beta for a game like SAO]

"I need to go kill something. Not just because I'm feeling fired up or whatever. We need to see if combat is still the same, because if it's not…" I left the rest of sentence to implication, thinking back to the tiny bead of blood that had seemed for all the world like an ocean.

"Better now against some weak mobs," Kayaba agreed.

We equipped our armor and began our way through the streets of Aincrad, avoiding major thoroughfares and keeping our hoods up. It wasn't that I didn't trust the people here. But I didn't trust people who were distressed, confused and afraid. Kayaba had his own, obvious, reasons for keeping his hood up. He also must have had a reason for sticking around with me, now that the immediate distress of our situation had worn off, but I wasn't going to look a gift lion in the mouth.

I tried my best not to hear the confusion and fear all around us, but it was a long walk to the city limits. The City of Beginnings was small for a city built to house more than the current game population along with an equally sizable amount of NPCs, with narrow streets and close packed buildings that often loomed over the alleyways that cut through them. By the time we'd reached the outer walls, the afternoon sun hung lazily in the sky, producing long shadows. A bird cawed somewhere in the distance. The density of people had thinned out the further away we got from city centre, but a steady stream of the brave and foolish served had served as our companions. There was a significant smattering of people milling around the open gates which led out of the city, perhaps because everyone knew that danger wasn't far away, and now that they were close to taking part in it, hesitation had struck.

We stepped over the line of bricks marking the end of the safe zone with little ceremony. It didn't feel any different out here. I didn't feel any more mortal than I had before.

"Hey, it just occurred to me that I hurt myself inside the safe zone. Had that been coded into the game before?" I asked, rubbing my fingers against the spot where I had cut myself.

"Nope" Kayaba said, stopping, pausing to think for a moment ", you're thinking that one of us needs to stab the other, aren't you?"

"How did you know?" we stepped back into the safe zone.

"Because I was too," Kayaba brought up his inventory and a dagger materialized out of blue light and thin air ", stab me"

I took the knife out of his hand, but hesitated ",Okay, but it feels kinda weird – actually it feels really weird stabbing someone you've just met that also happens to be Akihiko Kayaba, lead designer of Sword Art Online, the game-shaped reality you're currently stuck in"

"No hard feelings as long as you don't stab me too hard," Kayaba said, smiling wryly beneath his hood.

He held out his hand, expectant. So I stabbed him. And nothing happened. Because we were inside a safe zone, the blade bounced off him in just the way that rocks don't. I handed Kayaba back the dagger and he promptly pressed it against his own hand. A small red cut opened up on his hand and his health bar decreased by a miniscule amount. We both watched as the tiny wound closed itself before any blood could well out. Passive health regeneration sure was nice.

"So it's the intent that matters in safe zones" he said, and promptly began walking in the direction we'd been headed before.

"Yep," I agreed, trying my best to process that surreal little interlude. Had anyone ever told Kayaba he was weird? Because he most definitely was. Maybe it was a child prodigy thing. Then again, I'd had the exact same thought. Maybe we were both weird.

The boar fields were basically the first thing you encountered on leaving the City of Beginnings. Crowded would be an understatement at the moment, the bolder part of a hundred thousand people having ventured out to farm experience. We ventured on, in mutual agreement that somewhere less cluttered might better suit us, until distressed shouts in the distance rose above the standard din of combat. Looking in their direction, I saw a group of players in the middle of having their asses handed to them by a mini boss. Before I could even deliberate on whether help would be appreciated and/or necessary, a mob of the helpful and/or the opportunistic had swarmed the hapless boar like one of those videos of piranhas in the amazon stripping a fish clean to the bone.

"That's not a balance issue. We anticipated things like that happening for the first week or so before the player base became more spread out," Kayaba commented dryly "Of course, we also anticipated that logins would be staggered due to time zones"

"I see. But surely you had anticipated the sheer volume of people that would be on during launch? Anyways, if there's this many people out here it looks like we'll have to walk a lot farther than the edge of the fields like I was thinking. How far out do you think?"

"To answer your first question: Yes, we did anticipate the launch period volume and accordingly adjusted the spawn rates, but the system isn't capable of running as many AI at the same time as would be necessary to maintain the player density-difficulty curve we use to adjust spawn rate, so we ended up deciding to just take the hit for the first week or two" He grimaced "You always end up having to cut corners somewhere during game development, although I'm not sure those boars are even following their standard AI anymore. And as for the other question, forgive me if you'll allow me a moment to consider my answer"

We walked side by side in silence as Kayaba took a moment to deliberate ",Honestly, I think we should head to Medai, the next town to the North, and on the way to Tolbana, which is where we originally placed the first Labyrinth after kicking you guys out of the beta test"

"To a different town?" I said even as the idea sounded more and more convincing in my head.

The City of Beginnings was likely designed to hold even more people than it did right now, but the current state of its organization was something akin to the American Wild West. And while that was fine when SAO was a video game…

I did feel distinctly guilty about leaving behind a large city's worth of people who could probably use the knowledge and experience of a beta tester and the person who had designed the game, just as I had in the inn with Klein and his friend, but I reminded myself that in leaving we had made the implicit decision to help ourselves first. As selfish as that sounded in my head, it was the same logic they gave you on those pre-flight safety videos – "before you help others put on your oxygen mask first" and all that jazz.

"Actually, I think you're right. If we can grind our levels up to the mid-teens and then find the labyrinth that's real, concrete progress that we could conceivably accomplish. I wouldn't even know where to start in sorting out that mess," I said, gesturing towards the City of Beginnings "We'll probably encounter some mobs on the way there, too"

"Medai it is then," Kayaba said, and that was that.

Remember how I mentioned that I really missed the original SAO's running mechanics? Well the absence of them became very apparent to me in the next few hours as the game, or game shaped world – whatever – turned into a marching simulator. Even in the area beyond city limits, spawn rates were low near roads. We walked in mutual silence for the most part, but Kayaba still found several different opportunities to explain that the low spawn rates were "Mimicking real life" over the next three hours. Sometime between then and now the novelty of meeting him had worn off slightly, that combined with blisters forming in multiple spots on both feet, and the fact that we couldn't unequip our armor on the off chance something did spawn wasn't conducive to happy trails. There was a part of me that was almost relieved when a group of dire wolves emerged from the moonlit forests that had slowly grown out of the fields as we ventured closer to Medai.

"Cover my back and I'll cover yours?"

Kayaba made a noise of assent, holding his shield and sword at the ready. I drew my better dagger, feeling its balance in my hand. The wolves ran towards us and I could see and hear their huffy breathing through slathering jaws that very much wanted to eat us. The first one nearly bowled me over with the force behind its charge. I caught its jaws using the hilt of my knife, and swore I could feel my bones rattling. It slashed up my left shin and I inhaled sharply, swallowing a scream. The leverage of my dagger was just enough for me to maneuver it straight into the path of the other wolf, disengaging as they collided. The force didn't knock either prone, but they staggered in momentary shock and I didn't – couldn't wait to catch my breath. With a savage yell I buried all twelve inches of the blade into the neck of one wolf as Kayaba spun around, bringing his longsword down on the other.

These wolves didn't appear to be powered by AI anymore – they were too fluid, with none of the little moments of downtime between the AI ending one action and initiating the other. The last wolf hadn't done us the favor of waiting for its comrades to finish attacking and Kayaba was knocked backwards as it leaped on him.

Suddenly, it was like a part of me I didn't know about before had sensed my intent to kill. I'd never been high on cocaine before, but in my imagination this is what it felt like. Everything was faster and slower at the same time and I moved like my entire body was caught in a sword skill, getting around Kayaba and behind the dire wolf he was struggling with in a split second using a form of motion that seemed like the halfway point between teleportation and sprinting. I didn't think about fighting, but I didn't have to. I'd drawn my second dagger at some point and practically fileted the wolf along its side by the time I even realized what I was doing. Then I tried to catch myself on my injured leg and tripped over my own momentum, landing on my ass. A notification with excellent timing popped up just as I hit the ground. I'd gained 68 experience, 120 col and a wolf-skin from that encounter. That was apparently enough to level up in agility, dexterity and whatever "precision killer" was, along with pushing me to level two.

"What the hell was that?" Kayaba approached, offering a helping hand.

"According to the game, 'Precision Killer'," I said, shrugging and taking his hand "Did you level up too?"

"Yep, to level three," he said "I've got a wolf's paw now too"

Kayaba made a show going through his skill list, picking combat out of the broader subcategories and then scrolling to where Precision Killer should have been in his list. Honestly, he could have just told me that he didn't remember ever putting that skill into the game.

"It's not there"

I took a moment to open my own skill list, expanding the description on precision killer. Most skills had a simple explanation on what it did and how one could go about leveling it up but this one simply said "A gift from god. Learn it well and use it well"

"It's a gift from God, apparently," I leaned aside to show him my window before realizing that was stupid, but the window didn't follow me like it was supposed to. Instead, it was like the window could read my thoughts, staying fixed in place.

He frowned, scanning the brief description ",What isn't at this point"

We watched as the wolf in front of us twitched a few more times and then dissolved into a shower of blue polygons.

"Jeeze. Talk about lack of a cohesive design philosophy," I looked back to where the other two wolves should have been. My dagger lay by itself on the dirt road.

"It hurts me, what's been done to my game," Kayaba said "I guess that's the problem when you make my game world realistic but decide that you still want enemies with the potential to spawn infinitely"

"Yeah, the bodies would build up like crazy. Now that I think about it, the only dead boars I saw today were ones that had just been downed"

I turned to get my dagger and winced, freezing. I hadn't realized just how much I'd been favoring my right leg and the injury that had been all but forgotten in the sudden rush of adrenaline, hurt so bad that tears began welling up in the corners of my eyes. I looked down at a long set of ugly gashes running up my leg, soaking the fabric wet with deep red venous blood. Some part of my mind reminded me I was lucky it hadn't hit an artery – did our video game bodies even have arteries and veins? Or were we just sacks of blood waiting to be burst open like water balloons? – The rest of it was currently in too much pain to focus.

Kayaba handed me a healing potion ",Your leg is hurt"

The stopper came off with a little pop, revealing a clear, teal liquid that shimmered attractively, even in the dimming light, and I downed the potion in a single swig. It tasted like comfort and almost immediately, a tingling sensation spread up my leg. I watched the flesh there reknit itself with remarkable efficiency. In the time it took for Kayaba to retrieve my dagger, my leg had healed completely, the green health bar in the corner of my vision refilling accordingly.

"Thanks," I took my dagger from Kayaba, sheathing it behind my back ", They don't taste the same as before"

"The healing potions?"

"Before, it was just like drinking water, but now, it's hard to describe, but it's certainly not unpleasant. In fact it's amazing. Actually, I think I'd describe it as the best thing I could conceivably taste, and yet you don't want more after finishing one"

The rest of the way to Medai was uneventful. Only a sliver of the sun was visible above the horizon be then and everything was cast in a warm orange light by the time we arrived. My HUD clock read 20:00, but we were both just grateful to have reached civilization. I brought up my map, looking at the distance between Medai and the City of Beginnings. 10 miles. In armor, and in less than three hours, too. The limits of human endurance slider seemed to have been adjusted for these bodies. If they actually were our real bodies. But I suppose it wasn't surprising that a thing that called itself "God" would have been able to do that.