DISCLAIMER: I do not own Sword Art Online. I only own the original characters and locations created specifically by me for this story.

Sunday, July 10th, 2022, 11:50 A.M.

"Kazuto. Heeey, Kazuto, wake up." I poked fruitlessly at the sleeping boy's cheek; nothing I'd tried so far had managed to wake him up. "Well, I'm out of ideas besides just pulling him out of bed by force. What do you think, Kiko-chan?" I glanced over at my friend standing behind me. We were in Kazuto's room; we had plans to go to Akihabara today and Kiko and I decided to meet up with Kazuto at his house, since I lived nearby and she didn't live much further away. However, when we got here he was still asleep, and thus I was crouched down next to his bed, trying to wake him up.

"Hmm..." Kiko put her finger on her chin, then shrugged. "Well, go for it, I guess. No point in wasting any time."

"Fair enough." I stood up, violently pulling Kazuto's covers with me. "Wake UP, dummy!" Fortunately for him, he slept with pajamas on.

"Gwaah!" Kazuto was jolted awake by my sudden shout and the lack of covering. He blinked a few times before realizing that Kiko and I were standing before him. "Kiko!? Rei!? W-What are you doing in my room!?"

"Trying to wake you up so we're not late," I deadpanned.

He rubbed his eyes, still not fully awake. "Late for... what?"

"Seriously… You know what, I'm just going to go downstairs and wait for you to figure it out yourself." I did so, Kiko trailing behind me. "Why the heck is he still asleep so late anyways? You know, I would think he at least had enough sense to set an alarm or something."

Kiko giggled. "I guess not. Anyways, he keeps his room way too clean." She pouted in frustration and crossed her arms. "I couldn't find a single thing to make fun of him for!"

"Oh nooo, whatever will you do... Just tell him he looks like a girl or something, that always gets on his nerves."

"But that's too easy! I've already done that."

I shook my head, marvelling at how ridiculous Kiko could be sometimes. "Really… give him a break, Kiko-chan; you don't have to tease him all the time. He's already bad enough at social interaction."

"You're not much better." She stuck out her tongue at me.

"You little…" I pinched Kiko's cheeks and pulled them, not stopping despite her pleas of mercy.

At this point, Kazuto came down the stairs, stretching his arms. "Sorry about that… Kiko, what did you do now?"

I released Kiko's cheeks, and she promptly ran and hid behind Kazuto. "It's not fair! I was just teasing!"

Kazuto raised his eyebrow at me, and I just rolled my eyes. "Whatever, let's go already."

I turned around, but Kazuto spoke before I could go anywhere. "Hold on... Let me at least eat something, some toast or something won't take long."

"Toast… it's almost time for lunch, not breakfast..." I sighed. "Come on, we don't have much time."

"Please, it's just some toast, it doesn't take long." He walked over to the kitchen and started making his beloved toast.

"Okay, tell me something. How long does it take to get from here to Kawagoe Station?"

Kazuto stopped for a moment to think. "Er… 30 minutes? Probably around 20 if you run."

"And how long does it take to get to Akihabara Station from there?"

"... About an hour."

"And the SAO beta sign up starts when?"

"1:30… Calm down, it's not like we need to be there the second they open."

"Yeah, but it's going to be really busy! I'd rather not wait forever standing in line. Let's get going already! Come on, Ki—What? Where'd Kiko go?" I spun around to look for her, and I caught a glimpse of her long brown ponytail going out the door. "Jeez, hurry up, Kazuto!" I rushed out after Kiko, and I could hear Kazuto's footsteps behind me a couple seconds later.

Kiko looked over at me and grinned once I caught up to her. "Hehe, about time you got going."

"It's not my fault that Kazuto is lazy."

Kazuto walked up next to me, a piece of toast in his hand. "Hey, I'm not lazy. I just wanted something to eat."

"Yeah, and you were also asleep almost until noon."

"That doesn't make me lazy… I was up late last night."

Kiko rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure. Now hurry up, girly-boy, I don't want to have to wait around for forever since someone is so lazy."

"Hey!"

"Really, Kiko-chan..."

Monday, August 1st, 11:55 A.M.

The beta sign up that was held in Akihabara was as busy as I expected; quite a few people showed up for it. Soon after the beta had been announced, a rumor spread around that signing up in person would get you an extra chance at getting in. It was just a rumor, but I figured that it held some weight; what other reason would there be for a sign up event like that to be held? Fortunately, they had tons of stations set up for signing up, so there actually wasn't much of a wait, and me rushing Kazuto was kind of unnecessary. After Kazuto and I signed up, we went around Akihabara for a while. It was definitely good for us to get out for once; neither Kazuto nor I were exactly socially active people, and we probably would be even less so for the next month. About a week ago, both of us had gotten an email confirming that we had been accepted to participate in the beta test; it also had some basic information about the game, but I didn't take the time to read it.

Today was the start of the beta test, and the game would be opening up at noon. Fortunately, the test period lined up almost perfectly with summer break, so I had no school to worry about. After waiting the last few minutes for the beta to start, I put on my NerveGear and uttered "Link Start" to finally dive into the game. The device ran through its usual sensory checks and startup, and I was greeted by a simple welcome and prompt.

『Welcome to Sword Art Online』

『No character data detected. Create a character?』

『Y/N』

I thought it was kind of odd that there was an option to not create a character, but I didn't make much of it. The game had yet to give me a physical appearance, so I simply focused on the 『Y』, which took me to a new interface. The first thing I saw was a display of myself in front of me. About 150 centimeters tall, messy black hair that fell down to my waist, and a slightly above average bust; it was me, no doubts there. There were various menus to the right of the avatar containing all of the customization options. I could change the various proportions of my avatar via sliders or by manipulating the display directly, but I elected to leave that unchanged to avoid having any issues moving around, although increasing my height by a few centimeters was certainly tempting.

I didn't want to look exactly identical to my real self, so I did change a few things. My long hair would probably get in the way while fighting, so I changed it to a short ponytail. I changed my hair color to a light gray, and changed the color of my eyes to a much lighter, almost sky blue rather than their usual deep blue. I stuck with the default plain blue shirt, but changed the default skirt to khaki-colored pants. I also had a basic leather chestpiece, which only had a couple options to change the style. My shoes didn't have many options either. After I was done, I hit confirm, which brought up a window to enter a name.

After some deliberation, I couldn't think of anything, so decided to just use my real name, and typed in 『Rei』 using the virtual keyboard floating in front of me. Kazuto had said to me before that using your real name online generally wasn't a good idea, but I always thought that he was exaggerating a bit; it wasn't like I was using my full name, and people had no reason to suspect that Rei was my given name, anyways. I tapped the confirm button, which brought me to yet another menu. This one asked me to choose a basic weapon skill to start with. There were a few different options, though not as many as I expected. Perhaps more diverse weapon types would become available later.

I stood there in thought for a moment, trying to decide what weapon to use. Two-handed weapons were out; I never liked slow, strength-based weapons in the first place, and using a weapon that was the same height as me, if not taller, was… unappealing. Basic one-handed swords were just kind of generic, so I wanted something a bit different. I didn't want a rapier, either; while they probably would have some slashing ability, I didn't want to have to focus on thrusting attacks. The One-handed Curved Blade skill had the opposite problem; they were poor at thrusting attacks and excelled at slashing, and I would rather be able to do both. The reach of claw weapons was a little too short for me to feel comfortable, so all that was left for me to choose was the Dagger skill. After confirming my selection, I was engulfed by a strange light effect, and when it was done, I found myself standing in a large plaza, with a system message hanging in front of me.

『Entering Safe Area: Starting City』

Kazuto had agreed to meet up with me in the initial starting area, so I walked over to the edge of the plaza to wait for him. It took a while for how amazing this was to really sink in. Everything looked really realistic. If I focused on a specific spot, I could even see small details, like the coarse texture of a brick. If I didn't focus, though, or stood at a distance, the details would disappear, making the brick look smooth. Also, while the other player's faces looked lifelike, there was a strange… polygonal quality to them. I noticed the same thing during the character creation; it was definitely me that the game was replicating, but my face looked more smooth, more symmetrical. I guess recreating finer details is hard to do on such a large scale.

While I was looking around, I noticed a few people swiping at the air with their hands. A few of them didn't accomplish anything by doing so, but others got a menu to open up in front of them. I focused on one person trying to open their menu, and a green cursor appeared above their head. Ignoring the game UI for the moment, I looked at their hand, trying to see if they were doing anything specific. It looked like the player swiped down with two fingers extended to open the menu, so I tried the same.

… Nothing.

I'm regretting not reading the info that was in that email… Did I do something wrong? Why didn't it work? I looked around again, trying to spot more people opening the menu, focusing on how they were moving their hand. They're raising their hand up and swiping down quickly, extending only two fingers… it looks like using your middle and index fingers or index and thumb both work. I didn't do anything different, so… Oh.

I tried the same motion, this time with my right hand instead of my left. Sure enough, the menu opened up. On the left, it displayed various information: my current life total, level, experience points, equipped gear, and skills. The center of the menu had various options: 『Inventory』, 『Skills』, 『Friends』, 『Party』, 『Guild』, 『Map』, and 『Options』. I explored the various menus while I waited for Kazuto to show up.

Looking around at the other people in the plaza, I realized a small problem; I had no way of seeing other player's names. Focusing on one person would result in a cursor appearing above their heads, but I saw no option to view their name—or any other option for that matter. Maybe you had to give someone your name first before it would be displayed. In any case, I had no way of knowing which player was Kazuto. He had told me that his avatar's name would probably be Kirito, but I didn't exactly feel like going around asking a thousand people who they were. There were still a few people spawning in at the center of the plaza, so it was possible that he hadn't finished making his character yet; I decided to go stand over near the center to have a better view of the incoming players. If I was lucky, he would recognize me after spawning in, since I hadn't changed my appearance much.

After waiting for another 15 minutes, a player appeared who, after marvelling at the surroundings, shouted out. "Hey, Rei, are you here yet?"

I shook my head. Yeah, that's probably Kazuto. I walked up behind the player, tapping him on the shoulder. "Hey, doofus. That you, Kazuto?"

The player turned around and grinned at me. "Yep. Though, it's Kirito in here, remember." Sure enough, as he said his name, it appeared next to the cursor hovering above his head. His appearance… to sum it up in a few words, I would call it 'generic bishounen protagonist,' and it looked like he put way too much effort into it.

"What took you so long? And what's with that ridiculous avatar?"

"W-What? Ridiculous?"

"Yeah, ridiculous. Well, enough standing around, let's go figure out how to play this." Unsure of which way to go, I decided to just follow the largest road, which went north from the plaza.

"Hey, wait up!" Kirito wasn't ready for me to get going so suddenly, and had to jog a bit to catch up. "Um...Do you know how to open the menu? I didn't really read the info that was included in the confirmation email."

"Yeah, I didn't either… Swipe down with your right hand. You have to extend your middle and index fingers. Index and thumb works too."

It took Kirito a few tries to get the motion down. "Okay, got it. … How do you send friend requests to people? I don't see an option for it."

"Huh, I dunno. If you focus your attention on someone, a cursor should appear above their head. Maybe it's something to do with that."

Kirito looked over at me, then looked above my head, which was roughly his eye level. "Yeah, there's a green cursor… it's not doing anything, though."

"Hmm… maybe try tapping it? If sight doesn't work, the other method of interacting with stuff seems to be touch."

He raised his hand and poked at the air, presumably where the cursor was in his vision. "Ah! That worked. There's a few options…"

I did the same with his cursor, looking at the options available. 『Add as Friend』, 『Invite to Party』, 『Request Trade』, 『Request Duel』, and 『Block Communication』. The last one was also an option in the 『Friends』 menu, which allowed you to input a player name. I found it odd that there wasn't a similar option for adding friends, though.

I sent Kirito a friend request and invited him to a party, both of which he accepted. He had said before that he usually preferred playing solo, but he agreed to party up for the start of the beta.

"Now that that's done with, we should figure out how fighting works."

Kirito shrugged. "Eh, can't be that hard."

"Easy for you to say. You're probably the only person here who has any prior experience actually using a sword. Besides, isn't there some sort of system to help with attacks?"

"Yeah… I wonder how that..." he trailed off as we exited the main gate of the city, which prompted a new system message to appear.

『Leaving Safe Area』

The view was astounding. Directly outside the gates were gentle rolling grasslands, with a few small lakes dotted around. Two paths split from the main gate, one heading west towards a dense forest, the other east towards a large lake. Off in the distance I could see various mountains, some of which almost reached the bottom of the next floor. I couldn't see the sun due to the bottom of the floor above us, but the light from the gap between the floors reflected off of the lakes, causing them all to sparkle.

"Wow… I was expecting the view to be good, but this is amazing…"

Kirito chuckled. "Yeah, they really went all-out on this, huh. But we'll have time for sightseeing later, for now let's go fight some of those boars." He pointed at the numerous blue-furred boars roaming around the grasslands.

I nodded. "Just don't do something stupid and get us killed."

"Why would it be my fault? You're the one who doesn't know how to fight."

I unsheathed my dagger and levelled it at him menacingly. "Keep it up and I'll use this on you instead of the boars."

He raised his hands in defense while grinning. "Hey, calm down... Not like you'd be able to hit me anyways."

After saying that, he dashed off towards the boars to avoid my rage. "Why you—!" I chased after him, shouting at him all the way.

Thus, our month-long adventure in the SAO beta began.

Author's Notes

Hey, I really appreciate you taking the time to read my first story! It feels really awesome to finally get this off the ground. Between my extreme procrastination and my rewriting and re-rewriting of this prologue, there's probably a good three or four months from when I first started coming up with ideas for this story to now. Although, to be honest, I'm kind of grateful for the few months of planning time; looking at my initial plans and what they look like now, if I hadn't procrastinated this would look very different—and probably much worse.

Writing this prologue has really been eating at me… I really wanted to have some sort of introduction before going into the full release of SAO, but I had some trouble getting it right at first—it's all peachy now, though. It definitely helps to better establish Rei and Kazuto being friends, and Rei being a beta tester.

I've been considering making a section in the ANs that go into more detail about game mechanics and such, but I'm not completely sure about it, so I'll hold off on it for now.

As of the writing of this AN, I have yet to write Chapter 1, but I plan to release it immediately after this prologue, maybe a day later at the latest. After that, no promises on the update schedule; I'm not sure how busy school will be for me this year, so my free time might vary quite a bit. I'd like to shoot for once a week, though.

I want to just go on talking and talking about the ideas I have planned and where I'm going to go with this story, but I should leave the writing of the story for the part where the story actually goes, yeah? Anyways, that's all for now. Take care!