Prologue

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"Come on Ashley!! Hurry up!! At this rate we'll miss the event!" Erika yelled to her friend, while running back to where she had left her. She turned a corner to find Ashley with their friend, Brian, talking. "Oh, I'll just wait for you at the usual place. Don't be late." Erika backed up slowly before turning around and heading home. "She's right," Brian said. "We should go. How about we meet up later this week?"

"Alright... I know! How about the coffee shop, Saturday, at four?"

"Okay. Now let's go. Erika will kill us if we're late!"

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Erika hurried up to her room, anxious to play Endworld: Scrolls of Power (A/N: totally made that up on the spot!) She logged on and her avatar, Sakura, appeared on her computer screen. Sakura sprinted through the forest towards the village, Corinth. Once in Corinth,  she meandered through the alleyways between the various wood huts of the village until she came to the tavern.

Ten minutes later, two figures entered the hut. One was a mage, the other, a strong female warrior.

"Well, took you two long enough," Erika said into her microphone.

Through her earpiece, she could here Ashley's curt response. "I'm sorry if I have some kind of a social life, hermit."

"It's nice to see you, too."

Erika smiled as Olive, Ashley's avatar, walked over to Sakura's table, followed by Ash, Brian's avatar.

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(A/N: so for this next part of the story, it will be the POV of the avatars, but any dialogue will be from the actual people, kinda like you are in the game, but you can hear Ashley, Erika, and Brian talking.
So real quick you need to remember:
Sakura=Erika
Olive=Ashley
Ash=Brian)

"So what was keeping you guys? You took forever to get here." Sakura asked as she walked through the dark, winding tunnels of the dungeon.

They had been navigating the maze of tunnels for hours now and were almost near the end.

"It's none of your business," Olive retorted. The irritation and embarrassment were easily heard in her voice.

As they walked through the tunnels, the trio came into an enormous cavern. At the far end of the room there was a casket. Bones littered the ground.

"So it's a burial chamber?" Ash asked as he inspected the room.

"That would explain all the undead wandering the tunnels on the way here."

"It looks like there's and exit back behind the casket," Olive observed. She started to walk across the cavern, followed by Sakura and Ash.

The trio approached the casket. As they drew nearer, they could see an intricate circular mosaic on the floor with the casket in the center.

Olive was the first to step in the circle. Once she had entered, the lid of the casket started to open, the granite lid making a grinding noise that filled the cavern.

"Great. An undead dungeon boss," Ash mumbled before uttering a short incantation. Once his spell was completed, sparks covered his hands.

The lid of the casket hit the floor, sending a thunderous noise throughout the cavern. From within the casket rose an undead man with a crown on his head, a scepter in his left hand, and a sword in his right.

Olive raised her two steel swords, prepared to strike, and Sakura pulled out her mace. The undead king charged the group, and, while staggering towards them, he raised his scepter. The gemstone on the end began to glove with a sickening green light, and the bones that scattered the floor of the cavern began to assemble themselves into an army of skeletons.

"As if fighting an undead king wasn't enough, turns out he's a necromancer and we have to fight him AND a skeleton army!!" Olive groaned as she stepped toward the king, accepting his unspoken challenge.

"Okay," Sakura said as she turned towards the mass of skeletons. "Ashley, you have highest combat skills out of all of us, so you're going to fight the king. Brian and I will keep the skeletons out of the way for you."

"On it!!" Olive yelled as she charged the king. She delivered a series of decisive blows to the corpse, a few of which were blocked, and proceeded to groan when she saw that she had done little damage.

"Well this may take longer than anticipated."

The battle proceeded, and as Olive dueled with the king, Sakura and Ash fought back the horde of skeletons.

"Hey Ashley," Sakura called whilst performing a powerful spin attack to take out the skeletons around her.

"What is it, I'm kinda in the middle of something!"

Olive swung her left sword towards the king's head to draw his arms then stabbed his unguarded remains of a torso with her right sword.

"Did you here that the SAO servers are opening Saturday at noon?"

"Of course I did!! I'm the one who told you about it!!"

"Oh."

Sakura brought her mace down on a skeleton's head, crushing its skull.

"Are you going to log in and play?"

"Yeah, but I won't be able to play for long, cause I have to go somewhere Saturday afternoon."

"You know you don't have to almost miss your date with Brian because of me. That would be awful."

Ash stopped fighting for a moment and Olive brought her dual swords down and beheaded the king.

"ITS NOT A DATE!!!" Olive's voice rang through the cavern, followed by a loud clatter as the remaining skeletons collapsed.

Sakura, Ash, and Olive walked towards the door, Olive asked, "How did you even know about that?"

"I didn't, I was just joking around. But thanks for telling me!!"

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Ashley lay on her bed, her nerve gear on, staring at the digital clock inside the gear.

The server's gonna open soon. Should I log on??

12:00 p.m.

Here I go...

"Link start!"

Ashley watched as the words appeared in front of her:

Welcome to Sword Art Online!

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