3/26/14- Hello new readers that probably got here from my newer story Just One More Time. Apologies in advance that this won't be exactly stellar writing at first. I was still getting my legs as a a writer at the start of this story, but I improve by leaps and bounds by the end of it. I promise it's worth the read. I'll get back to editing this and releasing it one chapter at a time one of these days

First off, the story premise. I'm sure a good portion of mmo fans that play korean mmos or any other foreign mmos know about the people who get into the games before they come over to America by faking ips and proxying and such. I haven't done this myself, but I wondered, what if an American imported a nerve gear and managed to get into Sword Art Online even though he's not supposed to? Let me be clear from the start, the OC isn't going to change anything major in Aincrad. Kirito's story will go as normal. This is just a side story, like a lot of the stories I've seen pop up in this archive.

I don't speak Japanese or write it. So I can't possibly own Sword Art Online.

Chapter I: 10001 Players

I sighed in satisfaction, my messy dark red hair and green eyes staring back at me from their reflection in the Nerve Gear's shiny surface.

"About time," I grumbled to no one in particular, "I didn't think it was going to make it in time for the opening. Good thing I've already got my cracked copy of Sword Art Online off the internet from a beta tester already set up and ready to go. I wonder if any other Americans are going to find their way in, I haven't of anybody really cracking their way into SAO yet; that Kayaba Akihiko has to be some sort of genius programmer."

"Well no matter," I saw my own massive grin shining in the surface of the Nerve Gear, "I've been working on the crack for weeks now, and I think I've got it down pat from the last couple tests I did."

I took the strange white helmet and placed it on my head.

"Now... what was it I needed to say... was it link start?"

Immediately a flood of bright light engulfed my vision followed by hundreds of multi color cylinders that flew past my ideas. The machine then went through a series of checks for the five senses before coming up with a language option.

"I wonder what English does..." I scrolled through, surprised that there were other selections besides Japanese. "I'll just pick Japanese I guess. Being home schooled and learning Japanese since second grade does have its perks."

The rest of the data automatically filled in based on the account I'd already created on SAO's website. Then, a virtual 3-D version of me appeared on-screen.

"Ah okay," I scrolled through some of the options, "This has gotta be the character creation screen. Well, I'm feeling sorta lazy, and I don't actually live in Japan, so I'll just go with how I look in real life and create a name."

I picked a basic green version of the default outfit, tapped the button that said 'Finalize Appearance', and waited patiently until a text box asking me to choose my name/roll my stats

"Let's see here..." I mumbled to myself, "Might as well choose a classic of mine. Aurain or Pentathiel? I guess Aurain is good. Looks like my stats are just about where I want them as well. High agility, decent dexterity and strength, and the rest of the stats at their base levels. I can always raise vitality and luck later."

I typed in the name on the keypad and tapped 'Okay' on the user interface. A bright blue light surrounded me before a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds filled my vision. I blinked. Wait a second... this looks like real life! I guess the online screen shots weren't fake after all. I brought up my hands to my face and slapped either side.

"Oh man this is so cool," I felt giddy, taking in the sites of the town surrounding me. There were many building made of bricks, connected by a labyrinth of cobblestone pathways.

I couldn't believe how BIG the first town was. Seriously, in all my experience with MMOs the first towns were kind of tiny, and even the later towns weren't as massive as this one. Supposedly there were one hundred floors, most of which I assumed had towns somewhat similar to this.

"Alright!" I clapped my hand together, grinning like a maniac, "First things first I need to find a weapon shop and get that taken care of. Then maybe I'll find some quests to do. Grinding is gonna be pretty dull without at least some sort of goal."

A quick search through the menu showed me a map of the town, the ones connected to it, but nothing else. That was quite odd. My first guess was that I either had to buy maps or that there was literally no map of anything besides the cities and the paths to each one. The rest of the map must come from walking around on your own. At least I had a map of the town and a list of quests around my level though. That was a good start.

I picked up as many quests as I could and headed to the closest weapon shop. The one I decided on was just outside of town. I picked up a basic sword out of habit in MMOs and went to spend the rest of the money on hp potions. My first rule of MMOs was to always have plenty of healing items as well as an escape route, but unfortunately the teleport crystals were stupid expensive for a new player. Experience loss due to dieing is never a fun prospect.

Right as I was about to leave the general store NPC, something caught my eye.

"What's the dark red crystal sitting in the back there?"

"Oh." the NPC's eyes practically turned into dollar signs, "That's a full heal crystal! Guaranteed to fully heal you no matter how much health you have! It's only set you back 10,000 Col!"

"Only 10,000!?" I'm pretty sure my mouth dropped to the floor, "I'll be sticking to potions for now thank you."

Hopefully the Torchlight inspired potions that heal over time will be enough. I sorta like them in those games because you can drink one and it continues to work until the time runs out, even when you reach full hp. I'll probably be abusing that feature as much as possible.

By this time I felt ready to venture out into the fields surrounding the 'Town of Beginnings'

"I guess I should probably check to see what kind of skills are available," I opened up the user interface once again and scrolled over to the skill window, "Even if this game has no magic, attack skills still must exist in some form."

The skill menu opened up with a nice little chime. There was one white box empty, with eleven grayed out boxes all in a row at the bottom of my vision. Above the row of boxes was a list of skill names, with a little movie showing it in action every time I clicked on a new one.

I scrolled through the entire list seeing things like hiding, search, and sprint. Obviously since I only had one slot, an attack skill was probably the first thing I wanted to grab. Since I'd opted to grab a sword from the start, I scrolled down to that category to see what I qualified for. There was a single skill that went into my skill slot. Underneath it in grayed out letters were the skills I'd eventually learn from mastering that particular skill. That was interesting. Just as I was about to close out the window and head out to kill twenty boars for that woman in the east side of town, I noticed a skill down at the bottom that was all glitched out. I clicked on it, and the description and name was all in gibberish.

"Huh..." I muttered to myself, "Must be some sort of error on the part of the programmers. Well if they have a decent staff; they'll probably have it fixed in a day or two. No matter. Time to go hunt some boars!"

I pulled up my map and pulled it to the side of the screen so I could use it to navigate as I walked. After a few minutes of wandering the cobblestone maze of the first city (I was used to MMOs with small linear towns, give me a break), I walked across the bridge into the beautiful green fields that filled floor one.

"Let's see here..." I was mumbling as usual. I like planning out loud, "One woman wants me to kill twenty boars to help protect the area, and that one general store owner wants me to gather him some herbs. I guess I'll get going killing the boars. It wouldn't surprise me if they dropped the herbs.

"Alright boar," I got into a shaky combat stance, "Let's see what you've got."

I took out my sword. Maybe if I though the skill's name it would activate? I thought 'Rending Slash' and immediately my sword began to glow with a dark green light. I felt an impulse to run forward, and followed it. To my surprise I executed a brutal slash straight through the boar's side that turned into a bunch of crystals. The crystals burst and a screen showing experience, Col, and a list of items I gained. Not to my surprise, one of the items was one of the five herbs I needed.

"Wow that was cool!" I jumped around in joy, "I never realized VRMMOs could be so damn awesome!"

This pattern generally continued for a while. The monsters were only spawning here and there since a lot of the players were still messing around in the new town, so I didn't have to worry about multi-aggro activating and getting hit by a swarm of boars. One at a time they were a piece of cake, and I reached level two in no time at all.

It all ceased when I began to hear cries of terror coming from the town. At first I wondered if it was some sort of event, and I raced to the tallest hill I could find overlooking the town. To my surprise, what looked like the entire population of the game was crammed into the town's center area. I could see a disproportionate amount of girls in the crowd, and I couldn't help but wonder how many of them were actually girls in real life. Suddenly a blood red overlay covered the sky, with the words 'System Announcement' and 'Warning' repeated across it.

"Well that's creepy," I sat down to watch the so-called system announcement, "How come I didn't get the memo to meet in the town center for this supposed announcement? Wonder if it has anything to do with me hacking into the game?"

It got even creepier as blood began to drip from the red overlay near the town. That was when I heard a noise behind me. I turned to look, and I saw a man who looked like a blood-red grim reaper approaching me from behind.

"Hello my dear boy," a deep voice sounded from beneath the hood, "What exactly are you doing in my game? There aren't supposed to be 10001 players."

"Who are you supposed to be, and why are you here!?" I dropped into the same combat stance from earlier

"Me?" the grim reaper laughed, "I guess I can introduce myself. I am Kayaba Akihiko. I'm sure you know me as the creator of this game. Really I'm only here for two reason. My own curiosity and to tell you the rules of this game since you aren't at my gathering I forced all the players to attend."

"Your own curiosity?" I slackened and sheathed my small-sword, "About what?"

"I was curious about what kind of boy who could get past my security measures and make his way into my game. You'll soon find yourself regretting forcing yourself into SAO."

"Regretting?" I felt the pit of my stomach drop."

"Oh don't worry." Kayaba paced in front of me, "I won't be pursuing any sort of law suit against you. In a way I'm happy to have extra people here to experience SAO. The main thing you might end up regretting is that when you die in SAO you die in real life."

"What." the pit of my stomach vanished completely, "You can't be serious."

"Oh I am quite serious..." Kayaba took a quick look at my character name. "Aurain. When you die that sends a signal to the Nerve Gear to fry your brain.

"Well then I'll just log out!" I pulled up the user interface and scrolled down, only to find that no such button existed.

"You can't." Kayaba responded to my efforts. "No one will be able to log out until the 100th floor is cleared, and if anyone tries to forcefully log you out the Nerve Gear will also fry your brain. I've made all the world new organizations and governments aware of this."

"You.." I was practically shaking at this point.

"Call me what you will," Kayaba shrugged, "But considering that I came to tell you all this personally, you should be grateful. Enjoy my gifts to you."

I opened my inventory. Inside there was a book titled in gibberish, a weapon in the same gibberish, and one final item titled 'mirror'. I took out the one item I could actually read and held it in front of my face.

"Is this supposed to do something?"

To my great surprise, Kayaba let out a booming laugh, "Oh you ARE interesting. You kept your real world appearance as your avatar. To answer your question, the mirror reverts your avatar to looking like you in real life. This wasn't necessary because you already look like yourself."

"Is this some sort of sick social experiment to you?" I drew my sword again and pointed it at the reaper look-a-like, "Making death real and everyone look like themselves in real life!?"

"That's for you to find out on the 100th floor Mr. Aurain." and with that Kayaba suddenly vanished.

"Great," I sighed, "Looks like Karma finally bit me in the ass for worming my way into so many overseas mmos over the years. Glad I bought all those hp potions."

Lemme do some end of the chapter Sword Art Online system explanations. Everything in SAO is based on the skills. When Kirito blocks in the show, he's using some subset skill from the skill "Parry" When he's slashing, he's using some basic slash skill from the "One-Handed Sword" skill subset. You can't attack without using a skill. If you do you're basically flailing around. It's why Klein gets his ass handed to him.

-Forscythe