The time had come. Noah opened his room’s window. As he was on the second floor, anyone with a dder would be able to reach it. He might as well give the firefighters or emergency responders a way to enter his apartment without having to damage his door. He had put on casual clothes, bck pants and a gray t-shirt. He had done the initial configuration of the nerve gear earlier, which included running his hands all over himself as the software used the sensory input from his hands to map his body shape.

  There was thirty minutes left before the official start.

  [System, this world is based on SAO, but which version exactly? There’s a bunch of non-canon characters that were added with the many movies and games derived from it.]

  [This information is restricted. User will have to discover it by himself.]

  Noah nodded and put on the Nerve Gear. It was a little lighter than a motorcycle’s helmet, and the copious padding made it retively comfortable. He plugged the helmet to the computer, checked that everything was working as intended, and id down on the bed.

  [Then discover it I will. Link Start.]

  As soon as he uttered the activation command, Noah’s vision went dark for an instant, then a quick animation using all colors of the spectrum followed, and he found himself in front of a login prompt.

  By thinking about the name of the account he had created earlier, the corresponding field filled itself, and the same happened to the password.

  A direct brain-machine interface was quite convenient. No need to press buttons with your hands anymore. Too bad there were the whole death and brainwashing things that went along with it.

  He found himself in the middle of the central pza of the first floor’s main city. The ninety-nine floors above the fake sky all represented various environments like forests, valleys, and so on, but they followed the same general model. A somewhat circur pne of nine or ten kilometers in radius. Somewhere in the floor was the entrance to an extensive byrinth, big enough that several teams might require a day or more to map. Deep inside that byrinth was the boss room, and after defeating the boss, another room with stairs leading to the next floor would be unsealed.

  The pyers climbing the stairs would emerge near a city, and as soon as a pyer entered, a teleportation portal linking the city to the others would be activated, allowing every pyer to come without having to defeat the boss again.

  In addition to the city, most floors had vilges and other types of dwelling scattered around, to provide pyers with the equivalent of forward operating bases where they could rest without having to worry about monsters. Many NPCs would also offer quests to the pyers.

  More people were appearing in the pza. Noah moved to a side street and opened the game interface by extending his right index and middle fingers together, and swinging them downward.

  The interface was white colored, with the selected option highlighted in orange. There were five main categories. Inventory/Equipment, Friends/Guild, Communications, Maps/Quests, and Settings.

  By a stroke of luck, or maybe a certain goddess’s intervention, the name “Noah” was avaible, and he saw no reason to choose a different one. He also kept his new improved appearance for his avatar.

  Pressing the equipment button with his finger, a representation of his avatar appeared on the side, with ten slots. Three of them were already filled.

  “Cotton tunic. Defense: 1.”

  “Cotton pants. Defense: 1.”

  “Simple leather boots. Defense: 1.”

  Noah opened his inventory next. It was almost empty, but inside was a weapon.

  “Copper short sword. Attack: 3.”

  […Yeah, I’m not going to go hunt dragons just yet…] Noah idly commented.

  [User is wise.] answered the System, surprising him.

  [Smartass.] He smiled, not sure if that remark had been sarcastic or not. The System’s support interface might turn out to be more than a mere tool after all.

  Noah taped the sword in the inventory, and a contextual window opened. He taped the Equip button, and the sword was now sheathed in a leather scabbard, tied to his belt on his left side. Closing the interface, Noah untied the scabbard and retied it to his right side, as he was left-handed.

  He opened the interface again, unequipped the sword, and reequipped it. It appeared on his right side. Next, he opened his skills.

  There were two of them.

  “Hands of Nirvana. 1000/1000. Unique skill. When activated, physical contact with the user will cause other people to have their sensitivity temporarily increased by 100%.”

  “Lesser Healing. 1000/1000. Unique skill. Heal 1% of the target’s HP every second for 30 seconds. Cooldown: 300 seconds.”

  Noah knew that there were Normal skills, that one could acquire just by doing… things. Like using a spear to kill a monster would give the pyer the Spear Skill after the fight. Those skills were divided into three categories, Support, Combat, and Weapons. Rarer than the Normal Skills were the Extra Skills, who acquisition methods weren’t always clear. They included the use of some niche weapons like Katanas or Halberds.

  Composition skills, the few that had been discovered by the beta testers, were hidden skills that required at least two other skills to be used. For example, Meteor Break, a sword-fist two hits combo, required the One-Handed Sword and Martial Arts skills.

  And then there were the Unique Skills. As the name implied, only one pyer could have them. In the original fiction, only ten existed, and the protagonist had gotten one, that allowed him to use two swords and gain a few Sword Skills to use with them.

  Noah closed the interface again. He was now ready to go kill his first monster.

  The left the city at a brisk pace, and didn’t have to move more than a few hundred meters away from the city walls to find the first monsters. From the status bar above their heads, they were called Frenzy Boars.

  A few other pyers were already hunting, but the pin was rge, and they had enough space and enough monster not to interfere with each other. He pced himself behind one of the boars, and tried to adopt the position he had read about. Sword pointed forward, arm lifted at elbow level and pulled back, in position to thrust forward. His posture was fairly simir to that of an archer drawing a bow, but without a bow and with a sword in pce of the arrow.

  It took him a few attempts to have the correct posture before the system managing the game recognized it as the pre-motion posture of the attack skill “Linear”. He sword suddenly glowed blue, and his body was suddenly propelled forward several meters, sword extended in front.

  -54.

  The Frenzy boar, who possessed 50 HP, died on the spot with a sound of shattering gss, its body scattering in a mass of blue polygons, disappearing in moments.

  The move ended with Noah frozen for a fraction of a second in the post-motion posture before he could move again.

  Two white windows appeared in front of him.

  “You have learned One-Handed Sword.”

  “Result.

  Exp: 25

  Cor: 30

  Items: 2”

  Cor was the game currency, and the items were just low-grade crafting materials, meat and leather strips.

  One nice thing about the game was that he didn’t have to process the corpses to get the materials (since the corpse was gone), and the loot directly went into his inventory. Although that only held true for monster corpses He would still have to procure and equip a pickaxe if we wanted to extract ores from veins, or a fishing rod to fish, and so on. There were proficiencies for mining and fishing, too.

  Noah looked at his game interface, and sighed.

  Noah.

  Lv1

  Exp: 25/5000.

  HP: 100/100.

  Strength: 5

  Agility: 5.

  Unattributed: 0.

  Cor: 30.

  He was going to have to kill two hundred boars just to reach lv2. That was an almost Korean level of hardcore grind. At each level, he would gain three stat points, to distribute between the Strength and Agility stats, as well as 50 HP.

  His next test was now to kill a boar, without using Sword Skill. He approached one from the back, and thrust with his sword.

  -18.

  “Kiiii!” The boar scream in pain, and turned to face its enemy. Noah had already stepped back and prepared himself to receive the charge of the monster. And charge it did, with an acceleration that almost surprised Noah. He barely managed to avoid it with a jump on the side.

  He then ran after the boar, who stopped its charge after fifteen meters or so. He thrust his sword into the monster’s fnk as it was turning.

  -18.

  “Qrii!” The boar’s eyes suddenly glowed red. It was the “Frenzy” part of its name being triggered. Noah had read about this monster. When the boars lost over half of their HP, they entered a frenzied state and their attack power doubled.

  Not wanting to give the Boar time to charge again. Noah this time made a vertical ssh, aimed at the monster’s throat.

  -36.

  The boar died.

  Noah breathed out, as he reflected on the fight. He would have to repeat this to be sure, but he could already confirm what he had read the day before. Sword Skills did much more damage than normal attacks, and that monsters had weak points where they would suffer double the normal amount of damage.

  Going to the next Boar, he tried another Sword Skill, called “Horizontal”. As the name implied, it was nothing more than a horizontal ssh. Like before, he needed a few attempts to find the correct posture before the sword glowed green, and the move was initiated.

  -48.

  The boar was still alive with 2 HP left, and Noah quickly finished it with a thrust.

  Linear, Horizontal, Vertical, and Throw. Those were the four basic Skills that Noah intended to be able to use at will, as soon as possible. There were many more, including multi-hit moves, but he wanted to master the basics before trying them out, and some could only be unlocked after reaching a corresponding proficiency level. He needed to be able to adopt the correct posture to use them on the first attempt, or they wouldn’t be reliable enough to be used in fights against more aggressive monsters.

  For nearly two hours, Noah grinded Frenzy Boars, slowly getting the hang of the Sword Skills. He was getting close to two hundred boars killed, and finding free boars was starting to become an issue, as more and more pyers logged in. His One-Handed Sword proficiency had increased to 18/1000, without providing him any tangible benefit for now.

  From what he had read, proficiency with weapon skills had an effect on the damage done with them, at a rate of 1% damage per 10 points of proficiency. So, a mastered weapon would end up doing double the damage of one he used for the first time.

  He was about to reach level 2, and looked forward to seeing how the three start points he would receive would affect his performances in combat. As for his level in the Yin-Yang System… Boars only gave him a single Exp point, and he was barely reaching 20%. He wasn’t going to become overpowered overnight, that was certain. He was going to have to work for it.

  Noah picked up another rock from the ground, and was about to adopt the posture to activate the Throw skill, when he saw from the corner of his eyes another pyer get teleported away mid-fight. Another pyer farther away was also teleported.

  Noah sheathed his sword, and waited. A few seconds ter, he too was teleported, and found himself back in the crowded pza of the first city. More and more people were being brought in, and soon, the pza was filled. Noah knew that there were about ten thousand pyers in there.

  The pyers were agitated. A lot of them had noticed the log off button in their interface was absent, and were angry that such an obvious bug had made it to the live version of the game. And this forced teleportation must be another bug.

  Noah sympathized with them. They were about to be plunged in despair. But he already had done what he could for them, and he could not tell them about it. Or Kayaba would likely revert the change Noah had managed to obtain from him. And maybe kill him as retaliation.

  High in the fake blue sky, a red hexagon with the word “Warning” blinking on it appeared. An arm sound came from it, and drew the pyer’s attention to it. More identical hexagons appeared beside it, and more, spreading and quickly filling the sky, painting it red. When the sky was completely covered, rge amounts of blood poured from the interstices between the hexagons and fell toward the pza. But instead of reaching the ground, the mass of blood slowed down and coalesced mid-air, until it took the shape of a thirty meters tall, hooded figure, dressed in a blood red robe, and its face hidden in the shadows. It floated mid-air, looking down at the mass of pyers in the pza.

  “Welcome to my world, dear pyers.” Its deep voice was clearly heard by all the speechless pyers.

  “My name is Akihiko Kayaba. As of this moment, I am the only human being alive with control over this world.”

  “You have likely noticed by now that the log-out button is absent from the main menu. This is not a bug. This is a feature of Sword Art Online. From this point onward, you will be unable to freely log off until the summit of this castle, the hundredth floor, is conquered.”

  The crowd started becoming noisy.

  “Furthermore, the Nerve Gear cannot be removed or shut down via external means. If forceful means of exit are attempted…” Kayaba paused for effect. Noah had no doubts he was having the time of his life right now. “…the high-powered microwaves emitted by the Nerve Gear will cause lethal damage to your brains, and kill you.”

  Everyone around Noah was shocked into silence.

  “To be specific, the brain-frying sequence will commence upon any of the following circumstances: ten minutes of no external power. Two hours of network disconnection. Attempted removal, dismantling or destruction of the Nerve Gear. The authorities and medias in the outside world have been alerted, and the relevant services will carry your bodies to the nearest hospitals, where your physiological needs will be cared for. I regret to say that some families have already ignored those warning and attempted to forcefully remove the Nerve Gears from some pyers. As a result, two hundred and thirteen pyers have been permanently retired from both Aincrad and the real world.”

  Many windows appeared near the giant figure, showing headlines from various local and national new agencies. “10 thousand pyers held hostage!” “Trap on a massive scale.” “Lethal game, hundreds of deaths!” and so on.

  “Please proceed with caution. As of this moment, Sword Art Online is no longer a game to you. It is another reality. The standard means of pyer resurrection will no longer function. When your Hit Points reach zero, your avatar will be permanently deleted…” Another pause for dramatic effect.

  “…And the Nerve Gear will destroy your brain.”

  “Finally, let me prove to you that this world is now your one and only reality. I’ve prepared a gift for you all. You may find it in your item storage.”

  Noah already knew what it was, but still did was the others and took from the game’s inventory the item in question, a hand mirror. A fsh of light occurred all over the pza, and the appearance of every pyer was modified, to correspond to their real body. The Nerve Gear’s insides were full of sensors, and the pyer’s bodies had been mapped as part of the initial setting. So the pyer’s real appearance was recorded somewhere in the game’s software.

  Everyone around him was shocked and mortified as their real appearance was revealed. Some guys turned into girls, many girls turned out to be guys… and the panic started to set in.

  “You are likely asking yourselves, why? Why would the developer of SAO and the Nerve Gear do such a thing? Is it an act of terrorism? An eborate kidnapping to extract ransom money?”

  “What I seek is neither of those things. This very situation was my ultimate goal. I created the Nerve Gear and SAO precisely to build this world and observe it. I have now achieved that goal.”

  “This concludes the tutorial phase of Sword Art Online. I wish you the best of luck, dear pyers.”

  The hooded figure turned into a mass of blood again, and like his dramatic entrance was reversed, the blood was reabsorbed by the red hexagons, and they gradually disappeared. In seconds, the sky had regained its peaceful appearance. But it now felt like a lie.