A/N: Well, here we go again. Another failed work. In all fairness, I've only been writing for a year so far, so I shouldn't worry too much about these projects. Oh, well. I hope this final chapter can lead off decently into its sequel series – one with considerably less Slice of Life elements, which I can't write to save my life.


"Link Start."

July 20, 2023 – 7PM JST. The Harbinger family had logged into Sword Art Online: Curated Concerns. Following a sensory check, avatar generation from a photo scan, and a user profile creation, I and a couple hundred others appeared in the Town of Beginnings, on the first floor of a stripped-down Aincrad, the first ten floors of the floating castle holding the fates of around 8,000 people on the primary, official game server, inaccessible to us. While they were trapped, their lives at stake due to the NerveGears on their heads, the players joining me in this virtual expedition were free to log out and back in with their AmuSpheres.

Joining my sisters, nieces, and I, were 148 of the beta testers from last August, who did not play the released version of SAO. We had seen this version of the floors visited by the testers, and thus, we would know when they could raise concerns about differences.

Suddenly, a red GM robe appeared over me, as well as Abequa. And looking up, we saw who gave them to us: descending in the same robe, atop a glassy crimson disc, was the CEO of Black Yeti, my eldest sister, Adsila Harbinger.

"Welcome to the Sword Art Online: Curated Concerns Initiative," she announced from above us, opening her arms in a welcoming fashion, "As you can see, this is our own special server, separated from the death game. Now, we are here to learn what is different from the beta. The executives of Black Yeti Studios, have already seen this version of the ten floors you saw. We need you to tell us everything that is different from what you saw."

She then teleported everyone to the main hall of the Black Iron Palace, at the back of which lay the Monument of Life. We had reprogrammed the text on the stone tablet behind Adsila.

"This is the Monument of Life. In full service, it tracks who died, by name. Here, however, since only about 200 names are on it, there is room for us to show how many times you will respawn. At the bottom, the total number of deaths will be displayed. You do not each have your own number of allocated lives; collectively, we have 2,000. If we run out, your next death will delete the game ROM from your cartridge. As soon as one person loses their copy of the game, the server will shut down, and this attempt to gather data on the changes from beta to release, will be marked as a failure."

She pointed to the tablet – every name had "0" beside it, the Total read "0/2000," and the count of Lives Remaining read, "2000."

"Because you all know the game well, if each of us dies more than ten times, then clearly, we are doing something wrong with our research. So, please: act like this is your only life. To that end, we have only forced you to use your real appearances for your first lives, and your last. The next time a player here dies, their avatar will be changed to a randomly-generated design, their game progress resets to nothing, and they will start at a level equal to the number of open floors. This will simulate the gradual steeling of scared players, pulling themselves together and heading out to fight, in place of those who previously died. You'll also start with 10% of the Cor you died with, no lower than the currently-unlocked floor number, times 10,000. This will repeat, every time you respawn."

"So, on the tenth floor, someone coming back would be Level 10, with a hundred K?"

"Exactly!" Adsila answered, pointing to the beta tester who asked, "Back to avatars; when the 2,000 lives run out, and we get to the last chance, all avatars return to the ones you have right now. Then, you'll know that the next death is the last, before we have to try this whole thing again."

She pulled up a screenshot of a news article from December, about the deaths through November.

"Because if a couple hundred beta testers die as many times as a couple hundred other beta testers and roughly 1700 new players, in the same span of time as it took a thousand of you to beat nine entire floors and almost beat the tenth, then something is flawed with how seriously we're taking a situation like this. We need to understand how likely it is that a beta tester can be thrown off their rhythm, and we hope to grasp even a fraction of the effect this will have on the survivors in the long run – whether we see it for real in a year, two years, or three."

She then teleported everyone back to the Town of Beginnings. When the light around us dissipated, neither Adsila, Abequa, nor myself, were wearing the GM robes anymore.

"Right," the CEO called out as she pointed her first sword north, "Let's get some data, y'all!"

As she hopped off the disc of blood and it vanished, cheers erupted around the plaza, and then we began directing the beta testers to group up with the Harbingers in a party ratio of 5-to-1. This was aided by us already having reserved names with the difficult decision to just use our full names. So, everyone knew that I was Amira Harbinger, for example.

By the time everyone had joined a Harbinger they were happy with, there were still at least 100 without members of the family accompanying them; however, they were assured that they could submit information at any time.


"Alright, who do I have with me?" I asked my party, before noticing a familiar face. "Mr. Kikuoka?"

Kikuoka Seijirou led the SAO Case Victims Rescue Force, who had been responsible for moving the trapped players into medical facilities. My mother, Dr. Alamea Harbinger, was another member.

"I call myself Chrysheight, when I dip my toes into FullDive," he answered plainly, and then smiled, glancing back at his fellow testers, "I passed up the full release, to focus my attention onto other ventures with the technology. However, I feel obligated to give you all I can offer, regarding SAO."

"I didn't think you were serious about the avatar restriction," pouted a short woman with long black hair to my left, "Making me use a photo to generate it…"

I shrugged. "Sorry, Miss Kanzaki. I will respect your username choice and call you Pitohui, though."

"Thanks… 'Aiyana'. I thought you were Amira Harbinger?"

I chuckled, shaking my head. "I appear online with my true birth name. It was legally changed by my mom about half my life ago, at my insistence. Long story."

The five testers in my company shrugged. I then pointed to a girl with long purple hair, and teal eyes.

"Oh… I am Mito," she answered, looking especially disappointed, "I had such a cool beta avatar… I played a male, too, just to keep real ones away."

I giggled and patted her head. "That's why we GMs are here; we'll keep all gameplay restricted to a professional context. Glad you're getting along with my sisters, by the way – welcome aboard."

A girl with hair in a shade of red or brown that I couldn't narrow down, introduced herself next.

"I am Merida," she said with a weak smile, "My parents forbade me from using the NerveGear very shortly after the beta test ended, when I was diagnosed with a brain tumour."

I could only respond with an awkward smile of my own. "At least you're putting on a brave face."

We then turned to look at the last member of my party, who still seemed hesitant to speak.

I glanced up to the names in my top-left. "…Koharu? What's your story?"

She flinched as she turned her bright green eyes to me, a bounce in her shoulder-length black hair.

"U-Um… N-Nothing," she answered as she looked away, "I'm just… someone who fumbled her way through the beta. And who… failed to get a copy of the release version."

I blinked a couple of times. "Well, we appreciate you coming in. We'll get you polished up while we head for Horunka."

We did exactly that, and seeing that another party had already accepted the quest for the Anneal Blade, I showed my party the cooldown ending time. When they told me that there hadn't been any cooldown in the beta, I handwaved it as them having the chance to test every quest more easily.

Some quests had been given long cooldowns, others had their synopsis and story beats changed, yet more had been given different rewards, and for the sake of helping trapped players in the actual release of the proper game, there were many more quests added to the lower floors.

A critical piece of information, however, as we had found on the day when we confronted the boss of the first floor's tower, Illfang the Kobold Lord, was that many bosses had been altered; whether by changing movesets, or by replacing a boss entirely. Using Illfang as an example, the testers had stated that he used a talwar – an Indian saber – to execute One-Handed Curved Blade skills. In the release, however, he used a nodachi, a greatsword by Japanese sword standards; though, he was big enough himself, to use it as a katana, with the respective Katana skills.

With all of this in mind, we made sure to always check in on the testers' memories, whenever we started a quest, finished one, discussed how to beat a boss, fought those bosses, and so on. One particular bombshell came on the fourth floor, when the beta testers found that they couldn't tell us anything – as the floor they saw, was a barren maze of canyons, whereas the released version had a green plain with rivers running all around the floor.

One thing that puzzled beta testers in a way that made them more curious, as opposed to simply bewildering them, was something that they admitted may not have been a change from the beta; rather, just something they didn't consider a possibility.

From the third floor to the ninth, there was a multi-floor quest campaign centered on a war between two elven factions: the Forest Elves of Kales'Oh, and the Dark Elves of Lyusula. Through the initial activation quest, «Jade Key», players intervened in a duel between a Forest Elven Hallowed Knight, and a Dark Elven Royal Guard. As we heard from the beta testers, the expected result was merely to choose one to help, fight the other, realize they're both seventh-floor mobs on the third floor, and drop to half HP, before being saved by the allied elf with a forbidden power which kills both elves.

However, Adsila and Abequa used their GM powers to keep their parties in the green, in an effort to demonstrate a peculiar alternative outcome: despite the difficulty, with the red enemy cursors being very dark for either one, it was possible to kill the opposing elf, with the allied elf surviving as a result of not using the forbidden technique.

The surviving elf would then become a permanent ally to the questing party, making the subsequent quests in the campaign significantly easier. In addition, a new elf character would be generated for other parties' perspectives in the campaign.

As my older two sisters proceeded with the campaign's third-floor chapter, I had taken my party to a cave on the floor, where they expected to simply hunt monsters.


Instead, I took them completely off-guard when they were faced with a Whip Spider boss, which multiple of my party members identified as part of an elven quest dungeon. I then encouraged the five testers to follow me down the stairs, into the depths of the cave, to sight they only expected to find during the campaign: the Fallen Elf camp which my older sisters would eventually see later on.

"How did they react to that?" asked Adsila at the end of August, after we finished gathering data.

"They just had to figure out what else they'd missed," I answered, latte in hand, "They did not see anything coming; interacting with non-hostile Fallen, a secret third route to the campaign… And especially not the powerful quest rewards. The reward for a harder quest, was overpowered gear."

Among the rewards, were paralyzing poison throwing picks, daggers with high resistance bonuses, stealthy equipment, and aggressive items and perks. When knowledge of these rewards had been spread around, many worried that they could be applied as useful PK tools. Then dread came over every single participant in the Curated Concerns project, as it occurred to them that the possibility was very real, that some players in the actual death game... could potentially murder other players.

Without dwelling on that for too long, some curiosity was lent to the NPCs of the game, who were given interesting responses to certain player inputs. They began revealing lore for the game, much moreso than in the beta, about the history of a floor's locations and landmarks, the creation of the floating castle Aincrad, and even legends of the surface world from which the floors were carved.

"What amazed me more, was how advanced the roaming AI was," Abequa commented from across the boardroom table, "I couldn't believe it when Adsila told me how Kizmel had tickled her."

Adsila rolled her eyes, her face warming up. "It was the context; she was meant to scrub my back."

"The point being, she was a regular Dark Elven Royal Guard mob," I chuckled as I finished my latte, leaning back in my chair, "Didn't you have a similar interaction, Abequa?"

"My Forest Elven Hallowed Knight?" the second-oldest of us replied, "A little more vivid. The one I saved in the initial quest was a man, after all."

"Oh, my…"

Abequa giggled at my reaction, her face rapidly reddening. "Oh, don't act like you wouldn't follow in my footsteps, when you did exactly that in real life."

I choked on my final gulp of the latte.

"Come on…! I learned my lesson," I pouted, redder than both of the other two, "Besides, there isn't anything by this point, where I have to be told to wait until I'm older. I'm 24, now."

"That wasn't how it went when you were 15," Abequa cackled as she stood up, "I was 14, I went and did something stupid, mom tells us to wait, and then a year later, you're like, Well, technically I have waited – I'll give it a try, now! Lo and behold, same outcome."

I took a deep breath, keeping a smile on my face. "I'm still grateful for Sisika. If I could have had the same daughter when I was more prepared, I'd have it that way; but she's an amazing kid, even under the circumstances."

Abequa nodded as she settled down. "Agreed. I couldn't ask for better daughters of my own, than Shada & Shania. If I could have had them one at a time, though…"

Adsila stood up and hugged us both, after I stood up as well.

"Yoki's had a very cheerful childhood with the cousins you two gave her. I'm so happy to have us all sharing a home like this, even when we're all fully grown."

Abequa giggled again, returning the hug. "Raising twins has been a blast, but it's worth it to see our mom so proud to pass on her parenting talents."

I chuckled in kind, squeezing my sisters tighter before letting go. "And her dairy recipes."


We went to join our younger sisters in the living room, all gathered in the room with our mom, and the Singing Hawk, Liluye Harbinger. The latter closed the door behind her, making it obvious that she had just arrived.

"Well, it was a rough battle, but we made it: the Japanese courts will honor my US grant."

Tears of joy poured from the family, as we all embraced our 101-year-old ancestor.

Earlier in August, our mother, Alamea, received a call from Liluye. In that phone conversation, she revealed that the tissue scars in her lungs, from the asbestos in the ship on which she served during World War II, had finally grown malignant back in May. Or more accurately, they had done so back in January, shortly after Nascha's funeral, and she had only been diagnosed in May.

Needless to say, we were again frustrated that a bombshell of inevitable death was being dropped on us only a month in advance, as she then told us that she had returned to Japan shortly after calling.

After receiving compensation for the asbestos damage, she pursued a right-to-die case in the US, as she had been told that her particular case of Mesothelioma was untreatable. She was granted the chance to receive euthanasia, but remembered the way her mother had departed, and thus, had an idea which she thought could potentially work.

Shortly after getting approved in the US, she submitted all of the relevant paperwork to the Japanese government with the assistance of her attorney. Japan's right-to-die system was not its own thing as some early adopters had called it, but rather, they based their decisions to grant euthanasia on two specific court cases, developing a set of criteria for future cases.

However, just this week at the end of August, Liluye was told that the Japanese courts would accept the US courts' previous authorization, and that her choice of exit was valid.

"What's more, is that they're letting your mother watch over me," Liluye chuckled as she leaned on the wall, arm around Dr. Harbinger, "Same floor as your dear friend, I believe."

"What about the family name?" asked Adsila, as she brought her the NerveGear and copy of SAO which we had held onto for more than half a year, now.

"Taken care of," she answered with a smile, "Nalin is now the Phoenix Crest. She even invited those Addams friends of hers, to the ceremony. They're really a nice bunch – our family businesses have frequently crossed paths, but we hadn't seen much of the actual family since the 70s, until that ceremony."

"Addams, huh? What kind of business do they do?" I asked, curious.

"Oh, a little of everything. Farming, meat, mining, animal breeding. They're an old money family; Gomez comes from a noble Castilian lineage."

Interested gasps and murmurs of interest crossed the room, and then Liluye chuckled again.

"Anyway, I suppose Alamea should be getting back to work. Good thing I can still drive."

We said our goodbyes, and our mother left with our great-great-great-grandma, to send her off into Aincrad; a strange occurrence this late into the incident, but the circumstances were exceptional.

The morning of September 5th, Alamea called from the hospital, and told us that Liluye had been terminated by her NerveGear. She had managed to live in Aincrad for four days. We attended her funeral in Phoenix, on the 20th, where we encountered the aforementioned Gomez Addams, reading the Singing Hawk's will – or at least, the portions written out as an addendum alongside the video will, in which she spoke for herself. I was honestly more interested in seeing him than knowing what Liluye had left to anyone; though, I remained thankful for the portion I received of the asbestos compensation, and her portion of the inheritance from Nascha. The only one who received anything other than money, was the new Phoenix Crest, Nalin, who gained control of Liluye's own private military contractor, Ancient Ground Retainers, and their shipping subsidiary, Sage Cargo. And before we returned home once more, we learned that Ekta, Alamea's mom, would be running for president in 2024, and wished her the best before departing.

Unfortunately, my daughter Sisika turned nine on the 5th, and she found it impossible to celebrate, despite having barely interacted with either Nascha or Liluye in the time they were in our home. But she felt much better by the 17th, when Alaqua turned 24, and we gave them a joint party.


"Death on her birthday. Our children really seem to get shoved into acceleration when it comes to growing up, don't they?"

I had to agree with Abequa, nodding in response. "Even the threat of loss shook them, ten months prior; you know they think of Aaron as an uncle."

Adsila sighed, leaning back on one of our multiple living room couches. "Whatever develops them, appears to affect them more than just mentally. Mom should be having a field day studying such a phenomenon, but she's stuck watching imprisoned gamers."

I shrugged. "At least she saw your daughter showing physical symptoms of traumatic development. The whole family is just as relieved as you, that it was just galactorrhea."

Yoki's mother chuckled with a nod. "She's got the space to hold a serving, it just seemed unnatural when she said she was leaking. But you're right; I'm glad that it's all witch milk."

It was at that moment that Adsila's daughter popped up from behind the couch.

"Actually, mom – grandma said it's only called that for newborns. For me, it's just a case of wacky hormones and stress."

Adsila giggled and patted Yoki's head. "Of course – sorry, dear. Just don't do anything that could get you into a situation where this condition becomes practical, okay?"

"I know, I know. Thank you for being concerned, at least."

"You're welcome, honey." Adsila tightly hugged her daughter, before letting her go to the kitchen.

In the middle of October, Alaqua conceived another child; if she kept this up, she could overtake Alamea, our own mother, in the quantity of natural offspring. Though, our mom had a disadvantage by working a job with non-negotiable shifts – she didn't have nearly as much time to carry and raise children, especially without a consistent partner for fathering them.

When November 5th came around, we celebrated the birthdays of Abequa's twin daughters, Shada and Shania, as they turned eleven; there was very little deviation from the traditional routine, which included a gift of whichever generation of Pokémon they were next due to play.

Right in time, before the celebration for them actually started, my sisters had finally finished putting together the beta recreation of Aincrad's first ten floors, into the Curated Concerns ROM, and then compiled the work as a single project, comparing both versions side-by-side. After the party, we all took part in a test run of our recreations, and then before bed, I called my SAO:CC party of Koharu, Chrysheight, Mito, Pitohui, and Merida. I told them that I trusted them to represent the other 140 testers who had given us information about the beta, and that I could send them beta copies of our side-by-side comparison; all of them agreed, except the lattermost in Merida, who politely declined.

The next day, while claiming the reprinted cartridges from RECT, Adsila and I asked Mr. Yuuki and Mr. Sugou, for the entirety of SAO's assets and data.

"What do you plan to do with it?" Asuna's father asked of us, "I thought you only wanted to learn about the beta test?"

Adsila nodded lightly. "While that was our initial intention, it has come to our attention that there is much more to the game than the difficulty to clear it. This world which is being shown to them; it's going to leave an impression on their minds. Not just the trauma of losing friends, but of triumphs, achievements, sharing in an experience."

I brought her compassion to a point. "The software is hiding remarkable secrets. We intend to use every discoverable piece of dialogue to paint a picture of the world over which Aincrad floats. The castle could not have been built from raw materials alone, if it is a functional ecosystem of its own. Furthermore… We believe that the programming of how the system handles unexpected actions, is significantly more advanced than anything in present media coverage – to the point that the vague characters living on each floor, are able to evolve into detailed, organic people, with the slightest nudge off of their typical path."

"And you think this… Aincrad – the people within it, are indistinguishably real?"

I nodded to the other executive, with whom we were forced to work.

"If an influence derails them from the only path they know, they will find any possible way to have their current path, and the intended one, converge once more. In doing so, they retain all that they are subjected to between those points – listening to all stimuli may help them choose a route for returning to their proper designated roles, and so, they must also respond to the stimuli, in order to receive and absorb yet more information, which may lead them back to where they belong."

Both men nodded slowly. Throughout the day, we drew up a contract, and by the end of the day, it had Adsila's, Shouzou's, and Nobuyuki's signatures upon it. We would have what we needed.

The very next day, my CC party members received their revision copies, and in an inversion of the original run through to collect information, they each took five of us to confirm our accuracy. Mito, being closest with our youngest sisters, chose the eldest five for her party: Adsila, Abequa, myself, Alaqua, and Alawa.

On the 16th, RECT Progress finally sent over the full SAO internal library for Black Yeti to tear apart. For the time being, we simply datamined all stock responses, to avoid skewing responses to our questions about the world's lore. What we found was much like the first ten floors' NPCs had told many of us: 100 areas of a surface world had been carved from the ground, and stacked on top of each-other in an event known as the Great Separation. Approximately a dozen kingdoms existed on the surface, including the Forest Elf kingdom of Kales'Oh, and the Dark Elf kingdom of Lyusula. The surface world had magic, and Aincrad lost it. And only the elven royals knew how long ago it all happened, relative to the date of November 6th, 2022, on the Gregorian Calendar.


A couple days into our probing of Aincrad's world, every one of the Black Yeti executives who were both Harbingers and mothers – whom we called the Boardroom MILF Corps – were sitting in the multiple couches of the living room, when the younger pair of our twin sisters, Shuman & Sokanon, raced in excitedly.

"Girls, girls! It's out!" Shuman cried joyfully, as Sokanon handed us a game case, "RECT have finally published that project you said you'd work on localizing for them!"

"Huh? Slow down, little sisters," Adsila chuckled as she looked over the cover, and then grinned with equal excitement as she passed it to Abequa, who did the same before handing it to me.

Developed by RECT Progress, published by 'RCT', for the AmuSphere: «Alfheim Online».

"Well, I'll be damned," I chuckled, then giggled, "Wonder how it's going for them?"

"You can find out, can't you? Whether you get the game and play it, or you talk with your buddies in the team that made it!"

"Yeah! I hope you would play it anyway; there are nine races of fairies, and the first one to meet the Fairy King Oberon at the top of the World Tree, will be able to fly forever!"

Alaqua raised an eyebrow at Sokanon's detailing of the synopsis. "Forever? You mean, these fairies' flights are finite here?"

"It's huge enough that you get to fly at all," said Ayita as she passed behind the twins, "Why don't we give it a shot?"

I slowly shook my head. "We're kind of busy making sure we've accurately replicated SAO's beta…"

"Oh, make yourselves some free time," Shuman said as Sokanon opened the case, showing nothing inside but the mold of the cartridge holder, "We can all get it tomorrow; Misumi gave us the case to tell you about it – and don't worry, she'll keep looking at SAO:CC until you know you did it good."

I smiled and gave their heads a pat. "That's sweet of her. We'll set aside some downtime."

Our youngest three sisters whooped and whistled on the way to the kitchen, and then after dinner, Abequa and I joined Adsila in her bedroom office as she called Mr. Sugou.

"Hey, Mr. Sugou, sir – congratulations on the new MMO. How are the numbers?"

Natural enough question to open with. Adsila chuckled upon hearing the answer. "5.5K players? I assume you're hoping for that to increase tenfold by the end of the month? …Oh, absolutely, I hope that happens, too! Say, uh… Tomorrow, we're going to check it out ourselves, and… Oh, all of them? Really?! Yes, it's appreciated. Now, we figure that since we're working with you… …Huh? Technical difficulties? I suppose no launch day is perfect… …What do you mean you only have three? How did you expect to get by with a team of three devs? You— …Alright, I'm sorry. Once you can get it done, we'll get right to work, okay? Thank you. Alright… Sure, good idea. Thank you, again…"

She hung up, and leaned back in her chair. "He says he can't create GM profiles right now. But when the command is working again, he'll assign one to each of our accounts, once we've made them."

I scratched my head for a second. "Alright. So, what are we doing?"

"We'll make regular profiles to play first; get a feel for the game before we get a taste of the staff privileges, and whatnot. And we can get started in the morning – he's sent us all our own copies."

"Oh, wonderful! How unusually generous," Abequa giggled excitedly, "Maybe it's a make-up for the technical difficulties."

"Could be," I concurred and then turned to Adsila, "Wait… did you say they had three devs?"

Adsila set her phone down on her desk. "Yeah, it's just him and two other guys! Like, honestly, what are they thinking?! Of course they'll be overwhelmed on launch day! He has no right to be jealous of Mr. Akihiko when he isn't even close to an attempt to compete!"

I chuckled and patted my eldest sister's head. "Settle down, sis. We can laugh when he falls apart."

She sighed and nodded. "You're right. Let's check in on the review party for SAO:CC, now."

All we needed to know was our accuracy in recreating the beta of SAO, so we allowed my party to keep all of their progression from our survey, in order for them to see our efforts quicker. And when we left off in the afternoon, we had just opened the 8th floor. Logging back in, we were directed by the testers to the tower, taking the rest of the night to reach the town nearest to it. This time, they had infinite respawns, so we could leave them to their observations during our own downtime.

"Before we call it a night," Adsila addressed Mito before she could log out, "How is ALO, honestly?"

Mito scratched the back of her head. "It certainly appeals to me. With nine races competing to have their flight extended from ten minutes to infinity, there is constant motivation for PvP. And with my competitive skills, how could I miss?"

I chuckled and high-fived Mito. "If you can keep up with other players, AI enemies are trash."

"Y-Yeah, but they're still fun," she giggled awkwardly, "I mean, if I was in the true death game, I'd be avoiding player conflict as much as possible."

"As any sane person would," Abequa commented with a smile, "We're going to take a quick peek at Alfheim tomorrow – any tips?"

The purple-haired scythe user shrugged. "Nothing like this game – no levels and stat progression. Everything in combat comes down to natural motion, skill proficiency, and equipment."

Adsila smirked. "I love it, already. Hope we catch you in there."

Mito smiled warmly, and waved goodbye. "I'd like to catch up with your family more often, too."

We all logged out, and then after another 9-to-5 – or more accurately for us, 7-to-5 – and a good dinner cooked by myself, Adsila, Abequa, and Alaqua; we finally got the entire family set up in our bedrooms, and relaxed with AmuSpheres on our heads, the morning-delivered cartridges in their docks mounted on our nightstands. And finally, we decided to play a FullDive game – actually play; this time, for fun, rather than for work.

"Link Start."


A/N: That's right; the sequel series will be about the Harbingers – and related characters – playing ALO. Surely more exciting than just following a company through its business practices and personal problems, right? This work won't have its first chapter ready for another month, though, but I'll make the most of that time; without being able to rely on any of the player conflict that takes place later during Fairy Dance, I'll have to come up with original content just based on my knowledge of the gameplay and world lore.

Chapter 28 of Virtual Immigration is still coming next week. I'm pretty sure I can get just two more chapters out of Progressive Volume 8 material, before this work gets a month-long hiatus of its own for me to improvise on it, too. In the meantime, the regular fortnightly update schedule will continue, at least until Chapter 30.

If any of you have anything to say that can't be properly expressed in on-site feedback, such as directly roasting me as a person, or having a hand in my writing process, or even influencing the direction of my work, you can connect with many other SAO fanfiction authors at the SAO Fanfiction Central server on Discord, which you can reach with the entry key Nq8xrbYFEw – the code that appeared in previous chapters is no longer valid, and I will have to go back to them and edit it, to avoid confusion; I should have been checking every week to ensure it remained the same. I'm sorry if you saw a different server than what you expected, and I lost your trust.

See you all next Thursday-Friday overlap.