Aincrad 1

by Reki Kawahara

  A scan.

  “…Of course!” I muttered, looking up at Klein. “The NerveGear’s got those transmitters all over the underside of the helmet, including the part that covers your face. So not only can it read your brain, it also re-creates your facial details…”

  “But what about my height…and my weight?” Klein peered around, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

  The crowd of players, still staring about in amazement, had clearly lost a few inches in average height after the “adjustment.” Both Klein and I had set our avatars’ heights to be about the same as our own, hoping to avoid throwing off our physical coordination during full dive due to any changes in eye-level. But judging from the crowd, the majority of players had given themselves an extra six inches, if not more.

  And that wasn’t all. The average girth of the crowd had swollen considerably as well. But the NerveGear could only scan our heads. How could it have gauged our body size?

  Klein had the answer.

  “Wait a sec. I remember this ’cos I just bought my NerveGear yesterday. It did that thing during the set-up phase…What was it, calibration? It asked me to touch my body in all these different spots. Could that have been it?”

  “Oh…right, of course…”

  The calibration process was a measurement of how far the user needed to move to touch his or her body, such that the system could re-create the proper surface area digitally. In essence, it was enlisting the user’s help to build an internal measurement of the user’s body.

  It clearly worked. Every player in the world of SAO at this moment had been turned into a virtually perfect polygonal replica of themselves. The intent was obvious.

  “It’s reality,” I muttered. “He just said so. My avatar and my hit points are now my real body and life. Kayaba re-created our faces and figures to force us to recognize the truth.”

  “B-but, Kirito,” Klein wailed, scratching his head as his eyes bulged beneath the bandanna. “Why? Why would he do something like this…?”

  I couldn’t answer that. Instead, I pointed upward.

  “Just wait. He’s about to answer that, I’m sure.”

  Kayaba did not disappoint. The solemn voice continued a few seconds later, ringing out from the bloodred sky.

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

  And for the first time, Kayaba’s emotionless voice began to take on the faintest signs of color. Despite the situation, I felt a hint of longing in his voice. But that couldn’t be right.

  “What I seek is neither of these things. I have no goals or justifications at this moment. In fact, this very situation was my ultimate goal. I created the NerveGear and SAO precisely in order to build this world and observe it. I have now achieved that aim.”

  After a short pause, Kayaba’s voice was back to its usual monotone.

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

  His last word echoed briefly before dying out.

  The crimson robe silently ascended, the tip of the hood melting into the system warnings still displayed in midair. The shoulders, chest, arms, and legs followed into the bloodred surface, leaving a single outward ripple behind. The next instant, the giant wall of messages plastered across the sky disappeared as abruptly as it came.

  The wind blew over the top of the square, and the BGM from a band of NPC musicians slowly approached from afar, bringing life back to my ears. The game had returned to its original state. The only difference lay in a few very crucial rules.

  Finally, at long last, the throng of players exhibited the proper reaction.

  The square exploded into noise, convulsing with the sound of ten thousand voices all at once.

  “This can’t be happening…You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

  “Screw this! Let me out! I want out of here!”

  “You can’t do this to me! I’m supposed to meet someone tonight!”

  “No! Let me leave, let me leave!”

  Screams. Rage. Shrieks. Insults. Pleading. And roars.

  In the span of several minutes, we’d been turned from players to prisoners. We held our heads, sunk to our knees, shook fists in the air, grabbed others, and turned on one another.

  Oddly enough, the more the screaming continued, the clearer my thoughts became.

  This is reality. Everything that Akihiko Kayaba said was the truth. He, of all people, would be capable of this. That destructive, unpredictable genius was part of his allure.

  I would not be back in the real world for quite some time—months, if not longer. I wouldn’t be able to see or speak to my mother or sister. I might never do so again. If I died here…

  I was really dead.

  The NerveGear—game console, shackles, and guillotine blade all in one—would fry my brain and kill me.

  I took a slow, measured breath and opened my mouth.

  “Come with me, Klein.”

  I grabbed his arm, his figure still imposingly tall even after the shift to our actual body types, and quickly led him out through the hysterical mob. We must have been placed near the outside of the group, as it took little time to escape the crowd. I marched down one of the town streets radiating out from the square and stepped behind a stationary carriage.

  “Klein,” I snapped at the dazed man in the most sober tone I could manage. “Listen up. I’m leaving this city right now and heading for the next village. Come with me.”

  I pushed on, my voice low, as Klein stared at me from beneath his hideous bandanna.

  “If what he said is true, then we have to get stronger and stronger in order to survive. I’m sure you already know that MMORPGs are a battle over system resources. There’s only so much gold, loot, and experience to go around, so the more you win, the stronger you get. Everyone’s going to have the same idea, so the fields around the Town of Beginnings will be bled dry in no time. You’ll be forced to wander around, endlessly waiting for mobs to repop. We need to take this opportunity to set up base in the next town. I know the way, and I know which spots are dangerous. I can get us there safely, even at level one.”

  By my standards, it was a marathon speech, but Klein listened to every word. A few seconds later, he grimaced slightly.

  “But…remember what I said earlier? I stayed in line all night with some friends from another game just to buy this. They were logged in. They must still be back in the square. I can’t just leave them behind.”

  “…”

  I held my breath and bit my lip. The intention behind Klein’s pensive stare was as plain as day. The jovial, faithful man couldn’t leave his friends behind. He wanted to bring them with us.

  And I just couldn’t agree to that.

  Even at level one, I was confident that I could protect Klein alone from the more aggressive monsters along the route to the next village. But any more than that would make the risks too great. What if someone died en route and, as Kayaba said, had his actual brain fried? The responsibility would lie with me: the guy who wanted to leave our initial haven and failed to keep everyone safe.

  I couldn’t handle that unbearable pressure. It was impossible.

  Klein seemed to pick up on my momentary hesitation once again. A stiff but broad smile cracked his stubbly cheeks, and he shook his head slowly.

  “Nah…I can’t ask for more of your help than you’ve already given. Hell, I was a guild leader myself back in the last game. Don’t worry, I’ll get by with the techniques you taught me. Besides, there’s always the possibility that this really was just a bad prank, and we’ll be able to log out in no time. So go on, jump ahead and don’t mind me.”

  “…”

  For a few seconds, I stayed silent, grappling with a conflict the likes of which I’d never faced before.

  And then I spoke the simple words that I would grow to regr
et over the following two years.

  “…Okay.” I nodded, taking a step back. In a hoarse voice, I continued. “We’ll part ways here, then. Shoot me a message if anything comes up. Well…see ya, Klein.”

  As I averted my eyes and tried to turn away, Klein barked out.

  “Kirito!”

  “…”

  His glance said he wanted to ask something, but his cheekbones only twitched, and no words came out. I waved and turned northwest, the general direction of the village I sought to go next.

  After five steps, I heard his voice call out behind me again.

  “Hey, Kirito! Turns out you look pretty cute after all! Just my type!”

  I grimaced and called back over my shoulder. “And you look ten times better now that you’re a mountain bandit!”

  And having turned my back on the first friend I ever made in this world, I started walking forward. After a few minutes traveling down the twisted back alleys of the city, I turned around to look. There was no one there, of course.

  Gritting my teeth and swallowing the strange sensation that seemed to block my windpipe, I picked up my heels and ran.

  First the northwest gate of the Town of Beginnings, then a vast field and deep forest, and finally a little village. I raced onward toward what lay beyond, headlong into a lonely battle for survival without end.

  4

  Two thousand players were dead within a month.

  In that time, we never received a single message from outside, much less any kind of resolution to our crisis.

  I didn’t stick around to see it for myself, but tales of the panic that erupted when it finally sank in that there was no escape told of sheer madness and chaos. The crowd wailed, cried, and raged. Some even claimed they would destroy the game world, making futile attempts to dig up the cobblestones of the city square. Needless to say, the structures were permanent, immovable pieces of the game environment, and the demolition didn’t last long. It took several days for full acceptance of the status quo to sink in and new plans to emerge.

  The players split up into four rough categories.

  First and largest of those groups, at nearly half the game’s population, were those who chose not to believe Akihiko Kayaba’s conditions for release and simply waited for help. Their reasons were painfully understandable. Our bodies were sitting on chairs or beds in real life, living and breathing. Those were our real selves, and what happened here was just temporary. One simple little change of circumstances and we could go back. Not through the log-out button in the menu, perhaps, but surely there was something if we just figured out what it was…

  The other source of hope was that the game’s developer, Argus (to say nothing of the government itself), was most certainly making every effort possible to rescue us. If we were simply calm and patient, we would eventually wake up in our beds, surrounded by our loving families. We might even be temporary celebrities at school or work.

  It was hard not to fall into this line of thinking. Part of me was hoping for the same thing. This group of players chose to “wait.” They stayed within the first city, using their initial allotment of money—measured in a currency known as col—bit by bit to buy food and cheap lodgings, grouping together in loose cliques.

  Fortunately, the Town of Beginnings took up nearly a fifth of the first floor, as large as one of the smaller wards of Tokyo. This meant there was more than enough capacity for five thousand players to settle in without feeling cramped.

  But as time dragged on, there was no sign of help. Every waking moment brought the same scenery outside the window: not a blue sky, but the gloomy cover of rock and metal looming overhead like a giant lid. Their initial allotment of money wouldn’t last forever, and the waiters would eventually have to do something.

  The second group made up about 30 percent. These three thousand players decided that cooperation was the best chance of survival. The leader of the group was the manager of one of Japan’s biggest websites about online gaming.

  Under his supervision, players were grouped together into smaller bands, sharing items and col, and trading information about the labyrinths that housed the staircases to the next floor. The leader’s group claimed Blackiron Palace, the castle that loomed over the central square of the Town of Beginnings, from which they sent instructions to smaller parties and accumulated supplies.

  This massive gathering was without a proper title for some time, but once they all started wearing the same uniform, the “Army” label stopped being just a cute nickname.

  The third category, of which there were about a thousand people, were the ones who wasted their col early, didn’t feel like braving the monsters in the wilderness, and began to get desperate.

  Incidentally, even in the virtual world of SAO, there are inescapable natural urges—hunger and sleep. It made sense that you needed to sleep. Regardless of whether the stimuli received are real or virtual, the brain needs to turn off and recharge at some point. When players get tired, they find inns, rent rooms that suit their pocketbooks, and sink into their beds. With enough col, it’s possible to buy a residence in the town of your choice, but it’s a monumental task.

  The hunger was more of a mystery. Though we don’t like to imagine it, presumably our real bodies are being kept alive through some means of force-feeding. Eating food in SAO doesn’t actually fill our bellies in real life. Yet stuffing virtual bread or meat into your face will get rid of the hunger and make you feel sated. You’ll have to ask a neurologist to explain how that works.

  On the other hand, once you start feeling hungry, it’ll never go away until you eat. I don’t think fasting could actually end in starvation, but it’s still a natural urge that is incredibly hard to resist. So every day, players rush into pubs and restaurants run by NPCs, stuffing their bellies with food made of pure data. And that’s where the digestive process ends, by the way. No use dwelling on the less pleasant aspects.

  But enough about that.

  Most of the players who’d wasted their initial earnings and started going hungry wound up with no other choice but to join the Army. After all, orders were easy to follow if they were the only way you got fed at the end of the day.

  But even in virtual worlds, there are those to whom cooperation is anathema. The ones who resisted joining any groups or got kicked out for causing trouble wound up inhabiting the slums of the Town of Beginnings, living a life of crime.

  Town interiors were a protected zone where the system prevented players from harming each other, but there were no rules outside of town. Vagabonds teamed up with their own kind, avoiding monsters for the easier and more rewarding prey of unsuspecting adventurers.

  At least they didn’t stoop to killing—for the first year. This group of players grew over time until it reached my estimated count of around a thousand.

  The fourth and final category might as well be titled “miscellaneous.”

  Around five hundred players who wanted to help conquer the game but didn’t want to join the Army formed roughly fifty smaller groups known as guilds. They were a positive force in our advancement through the game, using their limited resources more nimbly than the Army’s massive bureaucracy could manage.

  There was also the extreme minority of crafters and traders. These two to three hundred players formed guilds of their own, focusing on the skills that would enable them to raise col and make a living without fighting.

  The remaining several dozen adventurers, myself included, were the solo players. We were the individualists who chose to act alone rather than join any group, either out of self-interest or because we felt it was the most effective means of survival. Most of the solos were former beta testers. We’d called upon our prior experiences to fly out of the gate at the game’s start, but once we were powerful enough to handle monsters and robbers on our own, we found little reason to work with others.

  On top of that, SAO was a game without magic (i.e., easy long-range attacks), which meant that enemies were fairly easy to
manage single-handedly, even when they came in groups. With proper skill, a good solo player could earn experience much faster than he could with a group.

  Not that this was without risks. For example, contracting paralysis while in a party just meant that someone else had to heal you. On your own, it could be a death sentence. The fatality rate among solo players was easily the highest of any category.

  But with enough knowledge and experience to properly avoid danger, the returns easily outweighed the risks. And we beta testers had an advantage over the others in those categories. As the solos used their knowledge to far outpace the new players, serious friction developed between the two groups, and when the initial chaos eventually settled, the solo players all left the first floor to settle in towns higher up.

  Within Blackiron Palace was a room formally known as the Chamber of Resurrection. Since the beta test, a massive metallic epitaph had appeared there, etched with the names of all ten thousand players. It had been thoughtfully designed such that when a player died, his or her name was very clearly crossed out, with the time and cause of death printed next to it.

  It only took three hours for someone to earn the honor of being the first. The cause of death was not monsters, but suicide.

  The unfortunate victim claimed that due to the structure of the NerveGear, if we simply removed ourselves from the game system, we would automatically leave the program and regain consciousness on the other side. He climbed over the tall railing of the terrace on the south edge of town, the very outer border of Aincrad itself, and threw himself overboard.

  No matter how hard you peered down, there was never the slightest hint of land or any other surface beneath Aincrad. Nothing but endless sky and layer upon layer of clouds. With the crowd at the terrace watching, the man’s scream grew steadily fainter as he plummeted, until he finally disappeared through the cloud layer.