Aincrad: Ascendance

A huge castle made of stone and steel floating in an endless sky.

That was all this world was.

It took a vagarious group of craftsmen one month to survey the place; the diameter of the base floor was about 10 kilometers — large enough to fit the entirety of Setagaya-ku within. Above, there were 100 floors stacking straight upwards; its sheer size was unbelievable. It was impossible to even guess how much data it consisted of.

Inside, there were a couple of large cities along with countless small-scale towns and villages, forests and plains, and even lakes. Only one stairway linked each floor to another, and the stairways existed in dungeons where large numbers of monsters roamed; so discovering and getting through was no easy matter. However, once someone made a breakthrough and arrived at a city on the upper floor, the «Teleport Gates» there and of every city on the lower floors would be connected making it possible for anyone to move freely through these levels.

With these conditions, the huge castle had been steadily conquered for two years. The current front line is the 74th floor.

The name of the castle was «Aincrad», a world of battles with swords that continued floating and had engulfed approximately six thousand people. Otherwise known as…

«Sword Art Online»

In 2022. A virtual reality massively multiplayer online role-playing game (VRMMORPG) called Sword Art Online (SAO) is released. With the NerveGear, a helmet that stimulates the user's five senses via their brain, players can experience and control their in-game characters with their minds.

In a certain well-lit room, two people could be seen talking to each other, the other looked very calm while the other looked very nervous and kept looking at the man in front of him as if he had heard something unbelievable.

"Are you sure about this Tanaka!? you know how risky it is to erase your memories and play the game! You will die! let's just do it like what I intended!"

"Kayaba, I have my own intention while you have yours, its the reason why we created this game and, you don't have to worry, I won't, after this, I will change my identity and hide from the whole world, even you, my friend won't be able to find me, let's see each other inside the game if fates let us"

The man named Tanaka stood up from his seat and looked at Kayaba who was in front of him and smiled, then he left the room leaving Kayaba who felt pained as he looked at his friend that was leaving.

Kayaba Akihiko, the creator of the game sword art online had a secret to hide to the world, Kayaba took a deep breath and calmed himself, he left the room and made his way towards a secret which no one knew.

He sat in front of a large computer and started typing at a very fast speed, his hands moved like he was playing the piano, then on the screen in front of him, lines after lines appeared almost filling it up then he suddenly stopped, he took a knife out from his pocket slit open his right wrist, he wriggled inside something until a chip came out, he took a deep breath and put it inside the computer, then he continued typing once again and until he finally stopped 8 hours later.

"This is my last gift to you, my friend, may you have a good journey"

Kayaba sighed and pressed enter.

After he was done, he wiped the blood o his hands and left the room.

A few minutes later, a loud explosion came in which shocked the surrounding people, the source was unknown and it remained a mystery why there was an explosion there.

"..."

Ding, ding, a chiming noise like a bell, or perhaps a warning bell, sounded loud, I abruptly opened my eyes from surprise and felt a little daze, slowly memories that I don't if it was mine or from my past life.

"Wait, I'm a reincarnated like those in novels?"

I asked in surprise, this is so cool! it was like I am the main character! I felt excited that I feel my blood pumping in which I don't actually feel, I don't know how to say this but, my body feels weird.

I looked at my hand trying to find what causes me to feel this way but then someone bumped into me waking me up, this time I noticed that there are many people around me, they wore unique clothes that I have never seen before but they do give me warrior vibes.

I looked around the surroundings, A large road paved with stone. Medieval streets surrounded by street lamps and the huge palace radiating a dark light a fair distance away up ahead.

"Where am I?"

I looked around confused, I have never seen this place before, I saw the others were also confused like me.

For a few seconds, everyone just looked around without a word.

Then a few mumbles and mutters could be heard here and there; it started to get louder.

"What's happening?"

"Can we log out now?"

"Can't they take care of it quickly?"

Comments like these could be heard from time to time.

As the players started to get more annoyed shouts like "Is this a joke?" and "Get the hell out here, GMs!" could be heard.

"What are they talking about? log out? GM? this strangely sounds like a game?"

Urghhh!

I felt my head suddenly aching, but it disappeared immediately.

Then suddenly.

Somebody raised his voice above all these comments and shouted.

"Ah…look above!"

I looked above me immediately.

There a strange sight greeted us.

The bottom surface of the second floor, one hundred meters up in the air, was checkered in red.

When I looked closely I could make out that they were made up of two phrases crisscrossing each other. The word that was written in red was [Warning] and the other [System Announcement].

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Quote:

When a man goes silent, it's his loudest cry.