The First Day

On November 6, 2022, the public release of the VRMMORPG Sword Art Online, or SAO, became the talk of gamers all over the world. People had been lining up to get the first releases of the game, to jump into the experiences that all the beta testers had said were so great.

While the world was in hype, there was a dark presence within the game's production. Kayaba Akihito, the main creator of the game, had secretly designed the game to suit his ideas. He had turned SAO into a roguelike game, but with the stakes extremely high. What the fans didn't know was, once they logged in, they couldn't log out, and they couldn't afford to die.

"All right, the store is ope…" The manager of the local game store opened the doors to a stampede of fans, all lining up to get a copy of the new VRMMORPG, SAO, and the NerveGear console to play it. The poor man hadn't expected to be knocked down by the rush of all the gamers, but he was knocked to the ground before he could even finish his sentence.

"You know, this reminds me of something that would happen in an anime." One of the few eager gamers who didn't rush in looked at the store manager. "And I thought the hype over the Call of Duty games was crazy. At least they are hyped up over a decent game."

"Seriously, you got to get over your hate for the FPS genre. I get that you don't like it for personal reasons, but some of those games are actually good. And I remember you saying that you actually enjoyed HALO."

"Dude, I wish you'd stop bringing that up every time I bag Call of Duty." Both of the friends grabbed a copy of the game they had been waiting for off the ground. In the mad rush, most of the excited gamers had thrown the cases everywhere to get their copy. "I swear these guys are probably going to die a few times on the first floor, they are way too excited."

"We'll see if you can survive your first few steps outside the first town. We both know how much you fail at these sorts of games." The quick retort was followed by an incoming punch from his friend, which he caught just as it was about to hit his arm.

"Damn you, why do you have to be so quick. Oh well, see you in the game later." Wishing that he could get some payback on his friend, he sulked out of the store, looked once more at the store manager, who had gotten himself up, and headed home.

Once the game was booted up, the character of "Rukia_Shimazu" was created. Rukia was a tall teenager with short brown hair. He had chosen a theif-esque looking class, with the starting weapon of a knife.

While Rukia and his friends were waiting in line for the game store to open, they had all said they would wait for each other at whatever the beginner's spawn area was. They had also said to each other what their character names would be.

One of Rukia's friends, whose username was going to be "Jinx_the_Brave", logged in at the same time as Rukia, although they didn't realise it. Rukia started swiping his hand to open the main menu, but the menu wasn't opening. As he was starting to get frustrated, a player with blue hair tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey, you'll need to use your other hand for that." Jinx snickered at the advice the player was giving Rukia. "And swipe like this." The man demonstrated the action to open the menu.

"Oh, so kind of like a cat then" Rukia smiled and cocked his head. Jinx looked over to the cat comment, thinking that it was possibly his friend.

The blue haired man rubbed his head confused. "Well, okay, you could look at it that way. The name's Diabel, glad I could help."

"Thanks mate." Diabel walked away after Rukia didn't say his name. He went to open the menu, saying "Nyan" as he swiped his hand down. As soon as he said that, Jinx turned around and tapped Rukia on the shoulder.

"Too much cat references. You have got to stop with the nyan thing." Jinx smiled at Rukia, holding his sword over his shoulder for no reason other than to look cool.

"Jinx, you know two of my favourite animes have characters that like being Nekos occasionally. And I see you didn't skimp out on the samurai style." Jinx had designed his character both to show that he liked the series Total War, as well as to mock Rukia's lack of skill at strategy games.

"Let's hope you do better at this MMO then you do at Shogun 2. You know you suck at a game when you can't beat the tutorial." Ever since Rukia tried playing that, Jinx had mocked him about it.

"Anyway, you want to start up that guild now, or wait for everyone to catch up? I'm not sure we'll be able to find them as easily as we found each other." Rukia opened the menu to find the guild menu.

"May as well do it now, not everyone recognizes you little verbal tic" As if on cue, Rukia swiped his hand as if he was a cat and said nyan. "Everyone else just finds it weird. We'll find them soon."

"All right, you want to go do some quick grinding, since the developers clearly didn't bother to create a tutorial level." Rukia found the screen to create a guild and created the Crows of Saika guild. He sent a guild request to Jinx.

"Yea, I guess we should. And sure I'll join, although I wish you would stop with the Crows of Saika name." Jinx accepted the guild request. "So, what you going to make the emblem, a rifle or a black and red crow?"

"I'll think about it tonight Jinx. Let's get goi…" Before Rukia could finish, a blue light consumed both him and Jinx, teleporting them to a colosseum in the middle of the Town of Beginnings.

"Uh, Jinx, what the hell just happened? Why did we get teleported to this place?" Suddenly a red hexagon appeared in the sky saying "System Announcement" on it. When it finished flashing, more of the red hexagons appeared to cover the sky with "System Announcement" or "WARNING" on them.

Before Jinx and Rukia could start trying to ask questions, a substance that looked like blood flowed from the edges of the hexagons. The liquid combined to for a red robed figure. It raised its arms and started talking.

"I'm sure you have already noticed the log out button missing from the main menu," said the voice of the robe, "But this is not a defect in the game." The players in the colosseum were confused, they started talking to each other, worried. Surely the GM was joking.

"You will not be able to log out of SAO yourselves. And no one on the outside can shut down or remove the NerveGear for you. Should this be attempted, the transmitter inside the NerveGear will emit a powerful microwave destroying your brain and thus ending your life." Images of news articles about this were brought up by the floating robe. The GM wasn't lying. There really was no way to log out of this game, and they could die from prematurely evacuating.

"Now are we done with the public service announcement, I want find a way to escape" Rukia was becoming irritated. He had school, he had friends who weren't quite into MMOs that much which he wasn't going to be able to see. "Jinx, we need to stick together."

Just then, the GM began to speak. Maybe he was going to say a way out of the game, Rukia hoped.

"There is no longer any method to revive someone within the game. If your Hp drops to zero, your avatar will be forever lost." Rukia knew there was something more to this. It wasn't going to be that you'd just create a new avatar like a normal rogue-like. "And simultaneously, the NerveGear will destroy your brain."

There was the kicker that he had waited for. Rukia looked up at the GM's robed figure and cocked his head. How could anyone be so sadistic, so cruel? Games were meant to be a fun way to live a life that you could never live IRL. This game was designed to simulate another life so much though that you'd die IRL as well. What twisted mind could think of that?

"There is only one way to escape this game." Rukia and Jinx already guessed what had to be done. Clearing all 100 floors was the only way to escape. Why else would an MMO have such a progression and be a trap like this.

"So basically, it's an actual RPG with an endpoint unlike other MMOs. Rukia, you sure we can handle this?" Jinx knew that Rukia wasn't an amazing gamer, especially when it came to MMOs or RTS games.

Before Rukia could respond, the robed figure had one last thing to say. "I have left an item in your inventories." Everyone opened their inventories at the robed figure's final remark before it disappeared. There was a strange item called the Reflecting Mirror. Rukia was suspicious, the GM who had just announced they were trapped in this game was giving them an item. Would this be an item that would help keep them alive, screw them over, or just amuse the twisted man who created this death game? Before he could decide whether to toss the item or not, people around him, including Jinx, were taking the item out of their inventories. They were surrounded in a blue light and suddenly their avatars had changed.

"What the hell is going on, what did that item do?" Rukia looked around until he saw his friend Jinx… but he looked different. He was like what he looked like in real life. It wasn't much of a change, mainly that he was taller than what his avatar originally looked like. There were also other subtle differences between his avatar and his current appearance, but it still shocked Rukia all the same. "Jinx, you look like you do IRL, this is weird."

Jinx looked around and saw people covered in the blue light and their appearance changed. Then he looked at Rukia and saw he hadn't used the mirror yet. "Okay, I know you like to make your avatar mostly like yourself, but just use the damn item. It would be wrong if you didn't after everyone else has." Jinx's friend clearly agreed with that logic and used the item. As Jinx had said, there wasn't much of a difference. It was mostly height and hairstyle differences.

"I don't see the point of this, why would they change everyone's avatars, especially when some people would have put so much time into their avatar creation." The creator's intentions didn't really come across properly through the speech. Rukia was confused by everything that had happened.

Rukia drew his weapon. "This dagger, it is my only defence against all the dangers in this world." Rukia closed his fist around the dagger and shot his hand into the air. "Jinx, we will survive in this game. It won't defeat us."

Jinx cocked his head. "What the hell showmanship are you doing you idiot." Jinx slapped his friend in the back of the head. Thankfully PVP was not possible within towns otherwise he might have actually caused some damage to his friend.

"Come on Jinx, just take out your katana and do it with me." This earned him another slap to the back of the head. "Yea, I should have seen that one coming." He rubbed the back of his head, even though it didn't actually hurt. "Let's go, we should probably do a bit of grinding for levels and stuff Jinx."

"Yea, you really do have a death wish, don't you Black Sta- Rukia."

"And here I was thinking you'd never watched Soul Eater Jinx. At least I know that you've seen that." Then Rukia realised something. "Hold on, I'm not going to be able to watch any anime for a long time." He crashed down onto his knees and screamed 'WHY!'

Jinx slapped him again. "Keep up the theatrics and I can raise my martial arts skills to max before they even clear the first floor. Honestly, it's getting annoying."

Rukia just smiled. "Let's get going. At least two levels then we can come back."

"I never realised how much of an idiot you are." Jinx sighed and followed behind Rukia. He had the horrible feeling that his friend was going to get himself killed. "Hold up… if you're Black Star, who does that make me? Rukia!"