Sword Art Online: Isolation

Chapter 2: Into the Fantasy

After three years of playing MMOs I had become as skilled as some of the veteran players I had seen online, I was even on the leader boards for a few games too. But I knew that without the help of Pathik I wouldn't have made it to being as good as I was and because of that I had stayed by his side as I still had more to learn about the world of MMOs, although I had learnt enough to be able to teach others the way that Pathik had taught me which resulted in meeting thousands of different people across many games. Because my father was English and my mother was Japanese I had been brought up to be bilingual, making me fluent in the two languages and allowing me to be able to play with even more people and boosting my potential friendship group to a global scale. However I preferred to play on the Japanese servers as there was a much larger range of games that I liked and it was on these servers where I would encounter the more serious players like myself, where as the English speaking servers had a majority of casual gamers who usually just annoyed others. When a player enters a game for the first time they need to choose a name to accompany their avatar, because this allows for even more creativity there was a wide range of players with different names that each boasted individuality and the different personalities. Some players like me would take up the role of creating a serious name that was both meaningful and unique; it also helps people to stand out amongst others who had just used names that were generic and dull. The name I had chosen and used across multiple games was "Albion", this name is meaningful to me as it links to my English heritage and because of that it makes me stand out amongst the other players on the Japanese servers whose names naturally related to their own culture.  

It was in the year 2022 that I finally learned what my cousin had been working on for the past three years, ARGUS had brought into the world the device that was capable of creating virtual reality and placing the player directly in the middle of it. The device was known as NerveGear and with it came the world's first Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game: Sword Art Online. When I first heard about what this device could do, I was absolutely amazed, I was enthralled by the fact that I could use this piece of hardware and use it to inhabit another body in a virtual world; for someone like me this was the biggest step in the gaming industry and I longed to be a part of it. You could have not believed my joy when Makoto told me that he had gotten me access into the beta testing of Sword Art Online, I believed this to be truly wonderful as it meant that I could be one of the first to experience the games new world. On the day when Makoto brought a NerveGear home with him from work I felt as though Christmas and my birthday were happening at once, after thanking him many times I took the box upstairs to my bedroom so that I could unpack and set up my new game. As I lifted the NerveGear out of its box and held it in my hands, I felt its heavy weight that was caused by its many electrical components within, the device was a helmet that was dark blue and had the letters NVG and the word NerveGear written in black above the brow. On the side there were also three small lights that represented things like power and connection status and on the back there were slots for wires which I found deeper within the box. I read the instructions intensely as I began to set up the NerveGear so that it was ready to play when the in-game closed beta started, as the time approached, I lay down on my bed and put on the NerveGear so that it completely covered my head and a small visor covered my eyes. I watched a small clock on the visor tick over to the next minute and I closed my eyes after I took a final glance at reality, I moved my body into a comfortable position and I uttered the words that would start the game; "Link Start!" The outside world quickly disappeared and I was suddenly barraged by hundreds of coloured cylinders that flew at me with a great speed, then I was greeted with the words I had been longing to see:  

"Welcome to Sword Art Online."  

After the words faded out of sight I was then greeted by a character creation screen that hovered in front of me like an interactive hologram. Creating an avatar to play as isn't a hard task when you know the look that you want to go for, after typing in "Albion" as my name and selecting my gender I went about building my in-game avatar. I decided to make myself look similar to my actual self, but with some added improvements that showed off how I wanted to be seen by others and not how I was actually seen as in reality. The changes that I made were mainly body modifications, I increased my age to make myself look like I was in my early 20s and I increased my height and strengthened my build to make myself look powerful. I was also able to choose the voice that my character would use so I used my normal voice as a base and then I made it deeper to better suit my new physique. When I had finished with my masterpiece, I was looking at what I felt to be the perfect version of myself, I smiled and happily accepted this new look with pride as I now looked as though I could take on anything. The person staring back at me looked strong and determined, unlike my real self who could have been considered the polar opposite. I did of course, keep some of my old features to show that it was still me underneath, little things such as the colour of my skin, my hazel eye colour, my ash blonde hair that fell down to the nape of my neck and covered my ears in a neat hair style. As I pressed continue I watched as the system processed the information before throwing me into the world of Sword Art Online; Aincrad, the castle in the sky.  

Suddenly there was a flash of bright light and I felt an unusual sensation across my skin that I wasn't sure what to think of, the sensation continued to the point when it felt like that my skin was vibrating so much it would fall off. The blinding light continued to grow also, I screamed for help, thinking something had gone wrong, but I realised that nobody could hear me as my mouth would not be working in the real world and there wasn't a soul to hear me in here. I crouched down, holding my head to my knees and closed my eyes ready to face what was coming next, fearing that I was going to die and no one would know until it would have been too late. The vibrations continued until all of a sudden, everything went still.  

That was it, I thought that I was dead; I had kept my eyes shut as I was too afraid to face whatever it was that waited all of us after death. But then I felt something I wasn't at all expecting, warmth. The warmth that I experienced was familiar and I can only describe it was wonderful as I felt fill my entire body to head to toe, I fell into a blissful state of relaxation for several minutes as I gently rocked back and forth while this warmth cradled me and sent me into a feeling of complete safety. This feeling continued in pure silence until but the sound of birdsong shook me from my slumber like state, as I began to wake up I then felt a breeze push against my body and I slowly began to think that I might not actually be dead. What fully woke me up was the sound of a deep voice echoing at me from a short distance. "Hey you, what are you doing? Get up", the voice called out. I quickly raised my head and opened my eyes and I beheld a sight that took my breath away, the beautiful landscape that was Aincrad astounded me as it was the perfect combination of reality and fiction, however unlike a normal world of fiction, I could feel the ground below my feet and sense everything that was previously thought only possible in the physical world. I looked around and took in my surroundings, I was sitting on a hill overlooking a rich landscape of fields, trees, flowers and in the distance I could see a town that looked like it was pulled directly from a fairy tale. All of which was underneath as perfect blue sky with small white clouds that danced across the sky in a slow but elegant fashion, it quickly occurred to me also that the warmth that I first felt was emanating from the sun that was perched high above the world, overlooking us all like a fiery god. This place truly felt wondrous and I was starting to believe a small voice in my head that was trying to convince me to abandon reality and live permanently in this new world. I was so dazed by my surroundings and becoming lost in my own thoughts that I hardly realised that the owner of the voice that I heard was coming towards me, becoming closer and closer with each step that they took.