Sword Art Online: Blades in the Dark

Chapter 1 (Tyler)

My name is Tyler. I am 16 at the start of this story, and I survived SAO.

I can barely sleep, I'm so excited for what will come in the morning. Tomorrow, the gaming world changes forever! A new game, on a new console, using a new medium of gaming, is going to come out in less than 24 hours. Sword Art Online, a game set in a mystical floating castle called Aincrad where players use weapons like swords, spears, daggers, and axes to defeat monsters, level up, and eventually get to the top of the castle. Sounds pretty ordinary right? sure, until you look at the fact that SAO is the first game to use the new NerveGear system, which is a full-dive gaming helmet. It blocks out all your senses and essentially puts you directly into the game. It is what I had dreamed of for years, finally becoming reality! Alright, I seriously need to go to sleep or I won't be awake in time for launch!

As soon as I wake up, I practically leap out of bed. Full of energy and excitement for the coming launch, I go so far as to slide down the railing of my staircase to get to the table faster. I inhale a bowl of cereal, wish my parents a good day at work, and run back upstairs to my room. I pick up the NerveGear headset and look longingly at its visor. The launch is at 11 AM, which is 2 hours from now. Ugh, maybe I should've stayed up later so I wouldn't have to wait so long. better to wait than to miss launch, I suppose. I go to play one of my other games until 10:30, at which time I worry that playing one more round might take too long.

I stare at my empty inbox, waiting for that email saying that the NerveGear has received the files. 10:50, 10:54, the minutes tick by agonizingly slowly. Finally! 11:00, and a message appears on screen. "the SAO full game is launching as you read this. prepare for the deepest gaming experience of your life!" I turn the computer off as fast as I can, and my NerveGear is on my head before the PC finishes shutting down. As I power on the helmet, I see that the SAO symbol is now present on the visor, whereas before there was nothing there but a blank screen. SAO is already selected to play, so only one thing is left for me to do. "link start!"

First there is only black, but then a flurry of color flies past me, and a NerveGear emblem appears. Then, a sign up screen appears. It asks for a username, password, etc. I fill in the rest of the information, but I can't think of a good name in-game. It has to be cool, sound like something a badass hero would have. hmm... it was made in japan and has that sort of style to it, so maybe I should have a japanese-ish name. Let's try... Takahashi. Yeah, that sounds awesome! I enter Takahashi into the username slot, and luckily for me it hasn't been taken yet. When I click enter, a brief message appears to tell me that my account has been created and that my character is loading, and I see a shining SAO logo appear in front of me for the duration of the load. It fades away, and I appear in the starting town of Sword Art Online.

I look down at my hands and realize that I can actually move without any extra input from a controller. This is the point of the NerveGear, I know this, but it is still amazing to have no need of a controller. A basic iron spear hangs off the sheath at my back, and a set of black leather starter armor is my only defense. I immediately decide that a shield might be useful for using a spear with one hand, until I check my sword skills and see that 2-handed spear skills are much better than the 1-handed skills, even though I would get a shield. I also notice that I have a point to put into a sword skill.

Every level up a player gets, the player receives one skill point and 10 attribute points. Skill points can only be used to unlock weapon and career skills, while attribute points can only be used to raise stats. The stats are health, speed, and strength. Health, obviously, increases the amount of health you have, increasing the damage you can take, speed increases running speed, agility, weapon speed, stealth, and the ability to use more nimble weapons such as daggers, and partly spears. Strength increases raw weapon damage, the amount of weight you can withstand carrying, and the ability to use heavy weapons like greatswords, axes, and again, partly spears. And of course, I have a spear. Yay for splitting up my stat concentration!

I unlock a spear skill for rank 1 spear users that allows me to dash forwards, spear extended, to skewer everything in my way and cover a great amount of distance in the process. I head out to the first battle area, the Fields of Koroth, and test my new skill on an unfortunate wild boar. The boar goes flying, a gaping hole in its side, and shatters into hundreds of floating glass-like shards mid-flight. The wound in the boar's side doesn't actually bleed, but a bright red area appears around the edge of the hole. Wounds in this game are shown by bright red instead of blood and gore. This game is sweet! If the starter skills are this strong, imagine what the high level skills do! I notice shortly after decimating the boar that a text box has appeared in front of me: Item obtained: ivory, boar hide. There's a crafting system in this game? This is awesome! I'm gonna be the best smith in SAO!

After slaughtering a few more boars, I notice that there is a clock at the top of the screen, and realize that it is actually about 5:00. oh man, I'd better get off soon, my parents might actually be home right now and they might get irritated if I'm too late for dinner. Time flies when you're killing boars. I go into the menu to logout, but the button to logout is missing. a spark of panic appears in the back of my mind. It's probably just in the settings menu. I go into settings, but still the logout button is missing. I use the contact admin button, but no one appears, no message pops up, nothing. About 30 seconds after this happens, and I am thoroughly worried, my surroundings go up in shattering crystal, and I appear in the town of beginnings.

As I look around, I realize that everyone else has been teleported to the same area. This must be an admin announcement concerning the missing logout button, I guess it isn't just me. The sky turns red, and a massive figure appears, draped in robes so that his face is not visible. The figure then proceeds to explain that no one is going to log out until the game is beaten, and that if we die in-game from now on, we actually die. He also says that he is Akihiko Kayaba, the creator of both SAO and the NerveGear. This must be some kind of joke, right? no one would do that, it's insane!

Then the figure proceeds to change the looks of our characters to be near-exact replicas of our actual selves. I turn into regular me, a mostly average looking teen, but with an imposing height of 6 feet. I am broad shouldered, heavily built, but not in the best shape. Although... the game appears to have changed up some of my features, in a good way. Most of my facial blemishes disappear, and I am definitely more fit than I remember. The NerveGear somehow knew that I didn't like these things, or maybe it just changes to make a model more fit for battle, and made small alterations to my character. Other people also seem surprised by their new physical attributes. One thing I noticed that isn't nearly as subtle as the rest of the changes made to my avatar, my hair is now black with a subtle blue tinge to it, and blue tips here and there. This hair looks sweet! Only a few other people have their hair like this, although some of them might have had it like that beforehand. But now I think back to the present problem. Oh man, this guy must be serious. If he's removing our characters and replacing them with the real us, he must be trying to show that he means business. I'd better be careful from now on, I don't want to get killed by a bunch of 1's and 0's. Then the imposing figure disappears, and the sky returns to its normal color.

I can feel the fear and tension in the air, already some of the players are breaking down into tears or panicking and sprinting out of the main area of the town. Now that I think about it, this is kind of cool. I don't have to worry about anything in the real world, and I can actually make a difference here! But wait, what about my parents? Or the rest of my family... I guess that's just another reason to beat the game and stay alive! Being a smith should help, every other game I have played has some serious gear advantages for making my own armor. I'd better get started, or all the monsters will be dead before I get to their areas.