Sword Art Online - Symphony of Midnight Lightning

by Ramiel110622

November 6th, 2022, was the date when 10,000 unsuspecting players were trapped inside a virtual world in which they were told that dying here would kill their real body and the only way to escape was to beat all 100 floors of Aincrad, the floating castle in the sky. Reboot of the Aincrad Arc of SAO going through ALL 100 floors.

1. Floor 0 - Intro

Howdy y'all,

I just wanted to start by saying thank you for clicking on my story. I know in this day and age there are several things which you can be doing and for you to willingly choose to read my story is nice, so thanks.

Next, what is this story? If it wasn't super clear in the description, this is a rewrite/fleshing out of Sword Art Online. I love SAO. I have read all the light novels and seen the show several times; however, for a story named Sword Art Online, it makes criminally low use of, in my opinion, a FANTASTIC setting, which has always been disappointing. The progressive novels have been rectifying this and are showing the full potential of the Aincrad Arc, but I'm impatient, and having to wait an estimated whole year for the translation of book 9 made me want to take my stab at it.

So, some disclaimers about the story:

For starters: I do not own Sword Art Online, nor were any of the characters that appear in both this story and the original canon my own creations. There may be some OCs, but for right now there are not any.

Ok usual disclaimer out of the way, now on to other stuff. This is not just going to be a beat for beat retelling of progressive or the original story, a lot of stuff will be similar i.e. floor settings, characters personalities, and even some major plot points (really only on the first floor and some cherry picked ones from the much higher floors) however I will do my best not to just rip them straight from the source material because if you wanted to read the progressive books you could be doing that right now.

Next, I plan to do an honest to God 100 floors; there have been other fics that have done all 100 floors-ish. I have read several and have enjoyed a lot of them, one of them was even the inspiration for me to start this project. But these stories will have time skips in between a lot of the floors I want to write at minimum one chapter for each floor, not necessarily every boss fight or everything that happens, but have one piece of the story on each floor. I have a lot planned out already so I'm excited about the challenge of it. This story, if I have done it right, is going to be a slow burn on a lot of relationship aspects. However, since I have most everything planned out already, I already have the payoffs planned, so you're not gonna get a disappointing cliffhanger. I just needed to sit down and start writing it.

I am planning on getting these chapters out at least once every two weeks. Some will be longer than that, some will be shorter just depending on my schedule. For instance, while writing this I already have the first true chapter done and will start the second one as soon as I finish this. Please leave comments, critiques, etc. This is my first full story, as a forever DM for D&D, I have written an untold number of oneshots and small campaigns, but nothing to this length or depth, so anything to help me get better at it is appreciated.

Also, Italics are a character's inner thoughts. [Bold in Brackets] is normally menu stuff, with the very limited use of Bold being administrator announcements. ((Double Parentheses)) denotes items.

I think that's everything, If I forgot anything or y'all have questions that need to be addressed, I'll put it at the end of the most recent chapter. Again, thank you for taking the time to read my caffeine-induced retelling over here, and I hope you enjoy

Sword Art Online - Symphony of Midnight Lightning

-R