Chapter 2

~Survivor's Guilt~

My name is Akihiko Kayaba, and as of this moment, I am in control of this world.

The boar dispersed into blue polygons in a flash and the sound of shattered glass filled the air as a curved sword carved its way through the side of the creature at amazing speed. The momentary trail of a red sword skill arc marking the path the vicious blade had taken.

I'm sure most of you have already noticed an item missing from your main menus – the log out button.

The boar's tusks barely missed the swordsman as he dodged to the side after cleaving into the mob. He danced away gaining distance as the boar dug into the ground in familiar preparation for its signature charge. The swordsman assumed a lower stance and the familiar pull signaled the sword art was ready to go and through focused eyes he waited for the boar to charge once more.

This is not a defect. This is how the game of Sword Art Online was designed to be.

More blue polygons spread into the air as the boar met with a fatal attack and once more shattered glass rang through the world. Two more beasts were close enough to agro and the swordsman stepped backwards, trying to keep them both in sight. One ran forward at a trot while the other dug into the ground in telltale fashion of the all too familiar charging attack.

You cannot log yourselves out of Sword Art Online and no one from the outside will be able to shut down or remove the Nerve Gear from your head.

The charge was easy enough to dodge, but you had to wait until the last second. Spinning out of the way, the boar shot past the swordsman and the second incoming boar became recipient to the spinning slice that came from the curved sword. It was a clean cut and the swordsman kept moving to the side in his spinning motion, suddenly stopping and throwing his hips and arm strength into a downward motion that resulted in a diagonal cleave lunching itself through a spray of polygons as the boar took a critical hit.

If anyone attempts to do so, a transmitter inside the Nerve Gear will discharge a microwave signal into your skull, destroying your brain and ending your life.

The swordsman rushed the boar that had charged past him, still turning and trying to face its target. The curved sword made its mark into the mobs broadside and it squealed in a simulation of pain, a mockery, an insult!

Despite my warning, the families and friends of some of the players have tried removing the Nerve Gear. An unfortunate decision to say the least, and as a result the game now has 213 less players than when it began.

The tusks hurt incredibly bad and the feeling of vertigo while flying through the air was enough to daze the swordsman after hitting the ground in a roll. The boar charged again and closed in on the wielder of the curved sword quickly, murder gleamed in the display of ones and zeros that were its eyes, and there was no hesitation.

It's important to remember the following; there is no longer any way to revive someone from within the game; if your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be deleted from the system forever…and the Nerve Gear will simultaneously destroy your brain.

The trail of red marked a zigzag pattern into and through the boar. From tusk to tail the mob shot into the virtual sky as a sea of blue polygons and sound. The swordsman scanned the area, murder gleamed in the display of ones and zeros that were his eyes, and there was no hesitation.

There is only one way for a player to escape now; you must clear the game. You are currently on floor one, the lowest floor of the Tower of Aincrad. Defeat the boss of this floor and the door to the second floor will open. Proceeding in this manner, defeat the boss on floor one hundred…and you clear the game.

The swordsman flourished his blade before sheathing it in the scabbard at his side. The loose cloth armor blew in the wind, the dark blue shades of the material a contrast to the green surroundings. The stoic figure removed the hood he wore and medium length, slightly spiked blonde hair fell free in a messy style reminiscent of school punks and biker thugs. A scar receding into the hairline on the left side of the head leading through the temple and stopping above the high cheek bone on the boys face bore a stark contrast to the otherwise tanned skin tone. His hard jaw line set as he took a deep breath and sat hard on the grassy field he had just cleared. At five foot ten inches he was tall for his age and quite muscular as well. He fell backwards and exhaled in a deep sigh, closing his deep blue eyes and imagining a contrast to his own appearance. Long black hair that fell halfway down the back of a thin, porcelain frame; sharp hazel eyes that pierced almost to your soul if you looked right into them, a soft smile, untarnished by violence that carried a sweet voice and unconditional care for humanity…and a pure heart.

Ok, so maybe his opinion was a little biased…at least he could admit it though, and that made it OK, right? He smiled to himself as he justified his thoughts to, well, himself and smiled at the circumstance he found himself in. feeling the need to be a little more honest to himself he did admit that she was pretty short, about five foot two he'd say…it was a touchy subject from as much as he had ventured and didn't trust his armor to protect him enough from the simulated pain of thrown cooking utensils. He laughed quietly to himself as he thought about the efficiency of such items in a battle and wondered if the damage would correspond to the level of the users cooking skill…scary thought.

Opening his eyes he noted how fast the clouds above seemed to be moving. It would be cold tonight if the wind kept this up after the sun went down. It still amazed him how realistic this…this death trap was. It couldn't be called a game anymore. No, it had stopped being a game when people started dying because of it. Of course there's no guarantee that you actually died in the real world if you died in the game, no proof was the popular cry…it was the same as the conundrum with proving God. It was impossible from this side to prove or disprove either way, and from the other side it was impossible to tell anyone else the answer that had been found the hard way. You were left to your own musings, left to draw your own conclusions and others to their own. Of course there were those at first who refused to believe it could be true. After all, nobody ever thought something as simple as a high tech piece of equipment surrounding two thirds of your head that intercepted brain signals and translated them into electrical signals which were then translated again into code to control your digital avatar in a virtual reality massive multiplayer online role playing game could do something like that…in hind sight that seems like an extremely silly thing to think.

First off the thing intercepts brain signals! If it can do that then what else do you think it has the power to do if the safety was removed or the power was amped somehow! And of course the thing could receive a simple detonation signal easy enough; it received and transmitted all of the data required for the latest and most advanced VR video game with almost no known lag and no known glitches or bugs! It was easier to get mad now than upset, it hurt less that way. There were people who believed it was one big joke, something to scare the newbie's and to set the mood of the game. It was denial, of course, who could have possibly thought that with total seriousness? Still people were insistent…desperate to prove there was a way out, who wanted to prove you could escape by dying. They jumped off of the tower. Seemingly believing they could log back in afterwards and have a great laugh with their friends still inside and lead the way home…but they never came back, not a single one!

No one ever came back…same as those countless who fell at the hands of mobs at the beginning of the game. When the beta testers could have stayed and taught us, they ran. They ran to grab all of the good hunting grounds and easy quests, the quests with the highest return for the lowest risk. Leaving us behind to fend for ourselves, to learn to fight, to learn what mobs were out of our league the hard way, to learn their attacks and combat strategies the hard way; through literal blood and sweat…and no small amount of tears as we lost player after player. Close friends, family, and even complete strangers who'd just seen one too many atrocities in this damned place committed suicide because of those losses! Morale destroyed as we lost hope more and more over the passing days. If they had stayed….they knew the area and the enemies, they knew the system and so much more! They could have lead they way, if they had stayed and taken charge. If they had been here, but they hadn't! And now this late into the death trap, after enough deaths to stake out our survival there are only a handful of ways to identify someone as a beta. After this long we learned how to survive on our own, how to follow at their heels and somehow be thankful for the scraps left behind since they were better than nothing!

And they think that a simple guide book is enough to make amends for those terrifying first days. It was published by Argo 'The Rat'…the one beta tester who had enough of a guilty conscience to do something for us in hindsight. It's saved lives, but a meager amount compared to those they could have saved if they weren't such selfish cowards. Those damn cowards…the lot of them, it was their fault so many died! It would be brash to blame every death on them, some were just foolish and others were in denial and others still had gone mad, they couldn't possibly have fought in their state of mind but still they tried! Damn them…so many could have been saved if they had been taught, trained, warned, anything! Anything would have helped, but they ran scared to gain power as fast as they could. Forgetting about the rest of their people, their society, their humanity, all because they were afraid of not being powerful enough to solo. The rogue figure lying atop the grassy knoll released a clenched fist slowly and dried grass fell from the trembling white knuckled hand, the faint sound of shattered glass could be heard as blue polygons disappeared into the air.

"Didn't know I could hold such a grudge…I'm a little impressed with myself."

Laughing out loud to try and calm his own mood the swordsman sat up and looked at the time on his display. The smile dame regardless of whether he wanted it to or not as he realized it was getting close to dinner time. It seemed a perfectly good waste of rage to be able to bring a smile to his face that quickly.

"Cheater…"

Checking the Col he had gathered from the day of grinding he smiled as he did the math in his head…yeah, it would be enough finally! He got up and started heading back towards the City of Beginners, drawing the curved sword and blazing a trail of red behind him as he left blue polygons and the sound of shattered glass in his wake.

"I'll be back soon…Alice."

Alright then, sorry for the long wait on the update guys but i have Chapter 3 coming up immediately and Chapter 4 coming up soon after, just need to write it out. I know writing it out sounds like it will take awhile but you have to understand how i do things on board the ship. While I'm in my rack after work I write the chapters on my Iphone and then I transfer them to the computers during breaks at work and upload them using those computers. The reason for the long wait is that one of our antennas went down so we lost our shore comms and had no internet...shitty, i know. But looks like the IT guys got it fixed so good news...mass update! Please review if you haven't, any advice is more than welcome and very much appreciated ^_^