Mostly Dead Means Slightly Alive [YGO/SAO FI ft Nihilo]

[Spectral Waltz]

Chapter 1

Virtual reality, true 'Full Dive' as it was becoming known. The ability to inject sensations directly into the mind and let a person truly experience a world that exists purely within the digital substrate.

A Holy Grail of entertainment ever since its first conceptualization, rapaciously desired and seemingly impossible to realize all at once. Theories were crafted, dozens of concepts were suggested by available science and technology and hundreds more put to paper by artists of all disciplines. Yet even the most reasonable-seeming remained tantalizingly out of reach, the brain and mind too poorly understood, the technology at hand already so precise and yet still lacking when it came to the precision such dreams might demand.

[ARGUS presents…]

Yet the text before one's eyes, not projected from a screen, simply hanging in space, told a story all on its own. The echo of words…

"Link start!"

…Syllables that came off one's tongue resonating in the mind unshackled, the sense of one's own body bled away into something muted and distant, all but intangible.

[...in partnership with Industrial Illusions Ltd.]

Colours bloomed in the space, aurora borealis writ small, a corona of violet that swiftly faded into blues, then greens, then yellows in turn. Smears of shades swirling through the visible spectrum, overlapping and blending until the black space was swallowed by white, and white in turn gains texture and tangibility. Scents reached invisible nostrils, cool wind brushed a formless and unseen face: damp of rain, tingle of ozone, a chill across barely-there as the blossoming clouds finally parted.

An endless sky, and a vast steel castle suspended in the blue. A final line of text wisped across it, titling the wondrous vision before being pulled away in the wind.

[SWORD ART ONLINE]

Then the clouds rose up again, white swallowing it all, and the distant sense of falling… Falling… Falling…

…Slower…

…and unseen feet touched cool and polished hardwood with no more impact than one might feel descending a step.

Once again colours bled into the white, oil paints poured onto wet canvas this time, swirling and pooling as they resolved into a certain configuration. Velvety reds, rich wooden browns, brass fittings gleaming cheerily in light that has almost the exact texture and feel of oil lamps yet lacks that certain faint flicker. It was a dressing room, at least in approximate appearance, yet for all the 'changing stalls' one could see, this seems centered on a circle in the middle of the floor, a circle in which a wireframe is inscribing itself in the air, the shape of a body starting out as rough outlines and rapidly refining itself as a sign above proudly proclaims what any experienced user would likely have guessed.

'Character Creation'

If the mind currently free of a vessel had lips, they would threaten to lop their head right off, they were so giddy.

Now, time to make an unassuming foundation that'd play nice with the largely nature-driven early floors. It was all forests and mountains and the odd river and lake, with the most exotic things got being plant and bug monsters until you hit the ruined city full of undead. Thus, a weathered and weary ranger, to perfectly slot in with the things from the deep woods that she'd be smacking cards out of and ideally getting one as a mount.

The closed beta test had promised character data would be retained in full release, unlike the earlier Alpha they'd gotten all this info from via forums, so players had point blank told to make their characters with the expectation of carrying them forward into launch proper. Therefore, the very first thing that was added was a milky grey-white eye and deep furrows of clawmarks on the surrounding flesh, giving a little hint as to where things would be headed build and motif wise.

From there, everything else just fell together naturally, a healthy brown-amber eye with but a hint of exhausted darkening around it. Brown hair pulled in a messy ponytail, a petite figure belying whipcord muscle built for handling a bow and trek through countless kilometers of woodland, a nice medley of brown leathers and green-dyed cloth… then came the little details. Adjusting the scars so they'd tug slightly on the cheek and lend themselves to a small, lopsided smile by way of resting face. Some callouses that took handling the practice weapons—bow, dagger, spear, the works—the chargen provided to properly arrange. Very precise touchups to the foot and ankle structure to make padding silently on all terrains come easily and comfortably, on top of enough flexibility to grip down on roots and branches provided something like leather sandals were in play.

It was a fun game of finding yet more and more minutia that could be changed at a literal thought or, failing that due to the sheer finesse needed, gently molding the avatar like clay. It took an entire two hours but by the time the player, now happily christened Helewise Golgari—suitably high fantasy, by their reckoning—, decided she was done it was with a warm fuzzy feeling of contentment.

The window full of sliders lay discarded and forgotten as refinements had quickly grown more and more precise, and by the time it was done felt as though it should be gathering dust if it wasn't for the timeless virtual nature of the space. There was no offer to save the configuration as they finally accepted their digital guise, but then again previews for SAO had made a point of mentioning that capacity for alts—additional characters for a single player—would not be available for this launch, so the lack of even a perfunctory option was not so surprising.

Spoiler

https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/bcd408dc2372.jpg

The dressing room faded away, leaving only Helewise, and the point of view was plucked up in a way that should have been nauseating if not for the lack of features around them to confuse the eye and inner ear. Perspective swung smoothly, curving around the body in a broad arc that bent inwards, terminating at the back of the head.

A split second of nothingness.

-step-

-tap-

Sensation underfoot, boot and sock and the irregular pressures of cobblestones muted by both. Sounds of chatter, dozens of voices, then hundreds. Sun on one's shoulders—her shoulders, now—and pure blackness displaying one last message in small and understated letters before giving way to the irregular darkness of one's eyelids.

[Welcome to Aincrad]

Mismatched eyes opened, and the central plaza of the City of Beginnings stretched out before her new body.

It was not as packed as it could have been, surely. The servers had been live for hours and the population had started to disperse accordingly, but still there were hundreds of people to be seen from even their single vantage point. New arrivals gawked as they drifted in and out of nearby streets and alleyways alongside more experienced players, distinct in how the former stared and meandered while the latter moved with some semblance of purpose. Although there was a certain middle ground in people like Helewise, who had done their reading on the Alpha Test. In the distance massive walls rose, and above them the underside of the second floor could only just be seen through drifting wisps of fluffy white clouds.

More than a few players were simply standing and staring at thin air with one finger raised, peering at their menus, no doubt. There was a gently pulsing 'new message' icon in the corner of Helewise' vision, after all, and swiping to open the menu brought it up automatically. Not a tutorial, not quite, but a gentle warning that all Alpha Test accounts had been reset, and while avatars may have been preserved, skills and gear—had they had any previously—were gone and would need to be reacquired. A glance down at the inventory tab showed a number of CoR above it, a slightly more generous amount than previous tests had offered. If she remembered the guides right, it'd be enough for a starting weapon, basic armor, and perhaps a potion or two to get someone going.

Now to gear up.

She planned to eventually go for a more Death Knight sort of setup, but this early on, when she had no mount and gear options were limited? Speed and range would be a hell of a lot more fun.

That meant going for leather armor as the best protection she could get without compromising on speed or stealth. But if she remembered that one forum thread right, the only ranged weapons in SAO were thrown, which… honestly, suited her just fine. Because it meant she'd grab spear skills which would then be gangbusters once she had a mount but for now would suit her just fine for hucking javelins at problems and keeping monsters at a distance.

The overall shape of the City of Beginnings had been mapped, but the details were lacking, possibly for lack of interest on Alpha testers' parts but more likely for lack of will with how massive it was. Four enormous roads ventured out from that central square, the northern and western ones leading to the great gates in the walls that separated the city's safe zone from Aincrad's various dangers in the field. Opposite them, the eastern road made its way towards the cathedral, the main respawn point for players on the first floor while the southern road was quickly shaded by the looming bulk of the Black Iron Palace. Between each of these wide major thoroughfares were dozens of smaller gaps in the buildings, leading to smaller and narrower side streets that criss-crossed the city in a rough grid shape. A few enterprising players darted in and out of them here and there but given how much of the city was set aside for player housing only the lucky or the knowing were likely to find anything amidst the thousands of empty lots.

There'd been a lot that Alpha testers either hadn't figured out or hadn't bothered to share—there were only a thousand of them, after all—, but just going from what was known a faint pattern emerged. The largest streets were populated by design, dozens of vendors making for a truly wide variety of options all in close proximity, maximizing efficiency. Meanwhile, the smaller streets were nearly unpopulated, a scattering of smaller shops that occasionally sold some niche items but mostly held all the same stock, making searching for them largely pointless unless you were particularly dedicated to some very specific bit.

But hidden amongst the smaller streets were the alleyways that wound narrowly through the buildings, barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast and often tucked into the geography in such a way that their entranceways blended in. Far too easy to miss. These places didn't have shops in them, a fact that nearly every post mentioning them seemed to make a point of reinforcing, but the steady stream of careful deflections told a story of its own. Especially for someone so addicted to exploration as Helewise.

There probably really were no shops, but that didn't necessarily mean no vendors, and it definitely didn't mean no nothing at all, because why go to all that trouble to hide these places if you weren't going to put something in them? The Alpha test rules regarding the sharing of in-game screenshots and footage had been impressively firmly enforced, but plenty of unsubtle hints had reached players' ears all the same, and the occasional picture that slipped through the cracks for long enough to become self-perpetuating had been proof enough for most.

That still left finding such places of course, but as long as one was willing to commit to a little searching they'd likely manage sooner or later, and at such a low level…

['Searching' +1]

The effect was slight but noticeable, a faint darkening at the edges of vision, a small stack of wooden crates becoming sharper, the gap between them and the wall beyond coming into perspective for a split second. Short enough to miss with an ill-timed blink or a careless look away, the latter an all-too-real possibility for a player looking about after that sudden skill popup entered their vision.

Helewise for her part simply slipped behind the boxes and into the narrow passage beyond, even if nothing in the world could've kept the smile off her face. That was some smooth integration to the point only the holographic pop-ups made her remember this was a videogame. Especially with how she could feel her scars tug at the lines of her face, whatever Argus intern had slaved over this minutia had her eternal gratitude.

The city closed over her head, shrouding the way in a dusty gloom. Narrow shafts of sunlight illuminated the way, shining on the small heaps of displaced cobbles and patches of moss that had grown up to consume the paving. The cheerful green 'Safe Zone' indicator in the far corner of her peripheral vision remained steady, the trail less outright menacing and more gently eerie as it descended to run alongside some sort of waterway. In any real and lived-in city it would likely be a sewer (or at least reek of piss like one), but thankfully the developers' commitment to detail hadn't extended that far, making for a surprisingly picturesque little scene. Pale stone lightly overgrown, clear water gurgling as it flowed steadily by, its surface a meter or so below the edge of the walkway, cast in warm tones…

"Who goes there…?"

It was in the midst of this moment that the challenge rasped from the shadows beyond, and a figure shuffled into view. Threadbare violet robes hung from bony shoulders and kept the face in shadow but for a faint shifting as the jaw worked quietly, seeming to make some sort of silent assessment before they spoke again, every syllable scraped from their vocal cords with painstaking slowness. "A swordmaster? After all these years? Not pacted, though… A pity…"

'Score!' Helewise cheered inwardly, even as outwardly she just tilted her head quizzically in a way that made her ponytail swish slightly, "What kind of pact are we talking about here?"

"Hmm… You do not know, perhaps there are none left who know now, how long it has been…" Apparently asking after the mention of a 'pact' had been the correct trigger as the NPC shuffled a little closer, their motions scraping hollowly against the stone.

"Denied earth's embrace, we wander. Bereft of life's touch, the eons hollow us, again and again." A chuckle that rattled like bones down a dry well before the cloak shifted, tiny pinpricks of light reflecting within the shadows of the hood. "You are not yet ready, but you could be, in time…"

Perhaps the search skill triggered again, perhaps it was merely a trick of the light, but for a moment, Helewise could see that there was no face beneath that hood. Only an outline of a skull looming from the shadows before fading away as quickly as it had come. "Would you seek to walk the path of we forgotten and decayed?"

She didn't flinch at the photorealistic look, nor at the ominous words. She smiled, "Yes. After all, it clearly has good company and I'm a wannabe cartographer, why not explore it ahead of time and introduce people to it? Some more gently than others."

Helewise had not been expecting to run into something like this, especially this early, but like hell she'd miss out on the opportunity.

"Take this, then," another shift beneath the cloak and a hand emerged. Skinless, fleshless, fingers of white bone holding between them a violet rectangle. A card depicting a humanoid figure, desiccated brown, blooming from a haze of blue-green energy. A little notification popped up in the corner of Helewise' vision.

[Quest Accepted: "Seeker of Beyond" | Play a Zombie-type monster in 25 Duels. 0/25]

The card was one such monster, naturally, a 'Regenerating Mummy'. Another rattling laugh emerged as Helewise took it without fear, and the chattering undead took a step back. The little quest window zipping up into the 'sidequests' tab of Helewise' menu once she dismissed it.

"When you have come to understand our nature, return, and you will be initiated." With its piece apparently spoken, the skeleton finally turned and began to shuffle away with that same scraping gait.
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[V.D]

Ladies and gentlemen, another Nil FI hit the building gang.

 

[Nihilo]

You know how it goes for an author I parasite. Weekly uploads will be on Fridays.

 

[pingas plight]

Holy Binkerton art

'Regenerating Mummy'.

Click to shrink...

Oh hey, Darkworld's prototype

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Alas, it seemed like Helewise had burned through all her luck for chance encounters, some more poking around the backstreets producing nothing and a quick trip back to the thoroughfares yielding her little more than what she was already in the market for. Namely a bog-standard boar spear and a decent set of leathers. She had eyed a quiver of javelins for a long moment, before remembering some complaints online about thrown weapon durability and taking another good look at the price, ultimately deciding that for her first trip she'd be better off just buying a couple health potions.

More cumbersome to use than crystals and their one-word incantation activation, since you had to actually pull the damn things from your belt or inventory, pop the cork and chug. Flipside, hell of a lot cheaper, so for healing in between fights it suited her just fine and would let her make the most out of her time out there. Then she could come back with a tidy pile of CoR and a bunch of animal drops to get some more serious kit going on and try out food in FullDive. Maybe even befriend a crafter or two who wanted the fat, tusks, meat, pelts and so on for their stuff.

Argus had made a pretty good choice with the most basic enemies being boars, absurd amount of materials you could pull out of that, helped kickstart everyone's stuff. Plus learning how to read some basic charge attacks was a good intro to fighting in VR, especially one that simulated the full five senses and would definitely get some people panicked and falling on their asses.

She may even be one of those!

For now, though, she was wading through the sheer volume of players filling the prairies and hills that immediately surrounded the city. The distant pillar up to Aincrad's second floor looming from one direction and the spires of the city's towers opposite it meant that it was hard for one to get truly lost in the rolling green, but the sheer scale was breathtaking even without the fantastical oddities that populated it. There were mobs of course, 'Frenzy Boars' were fairly peaceful despite their names, with a low aggro radius and a tendency to wander about alone rather than in herds, making it difficult for a player to accidentally draw in more than they could handle while they adjusted to VR combat.

Better still, they were as predictable as the online guides had said, lowering their heads in a blatant tell before charging in a straight line, fast but lacking any ability to deviate once they'd committed to their attack, making them easy to evade so long as one wasn't entirely flatfooted. She passed a player who'd apparently put a fair bit of effort into getting a rakish sort of ronin look trying to take a charge head-on only to be bodily tossed about on impact, while an onlooking player with a simpler dark-haired avatar visibly sighed at his antics. The more successful players Helewise saw seemed to favor dodging and striking at the flanks as the boar charged by, often finishing the fight in one or two good blows, but then again, none of the combatants she passed carried spears like hers.

Disappointing, but perhaps that was to be expected from Sword Art Online.

Still, it would be foolish to ignore the clear trend, even if in real life a boar spear like she'd gotten was designed for bracing against the ground and punishing that exact kind of charge. No way to know how well that'd apply here and she'd rather not find it was 'your spear snaps like a twig after a few rounds of this'. Players thinned out the further from the city one got and Helewise soon enough found a reasonably unoccupied stretch of plains surrounding a curious little pond. Water flowing from a distortion in the air to tumble into a picturesque pool that never seemed to fill despite lacking any visible drainage, gleaming crystal clear in the sunlight heedless of its own apparent stagnancy. Some sort of magic fountain teleporting water from the bottom to the top, maybe?

The boars were here too, occasionally grouped up into small herds this far from the city, but with plenty of stragglers still meandering about to be lured into fights. Wandering within ten meters saw them start turning to track her, and from watching the other players she could estimate that closing to six or seven meters would have the boar start pawing the earth, hinting at the charge to come.

Or if one was being exceptionally cautious, she'd seen more than a few enterprising players open their fights by simply throwing a rock to trigger the aggro from a range of their choice on impact, presuming their aim and arm were up to the task of course.

She just walked right up to one, those little tweaks she'd done to her feet making sure staying on the balls of her feet was perfectly comfortable as she approached, spear held just like her stance; low, loose and ready. At some invisible threshold, the boar stopped pawing at the ground and committed to the charge with a stomp and a porcine squeal, leaving her to twirl out of the way with a laughing exclamation of, "Toro!"

Then she stabbed the fucker.

She'd aimed for the neck, but her timing had been a bit off and so instead she opened a wide gash of red wireframes down its side… then promptly watched its footing go to shit and send it crashing into the pond. After that it was honestly kinda sad, watching it scream as it tried and failed to get any grip on the smooth waterside stones, so she just stuck her spear through its eye. While it looked like just more wireframes and red light, someone had put real work on the feedback of attacks, she'd felt the slight resistance as she punctured the eyesocket to skewer the brains and finally scraped against the inside of the skull before the whole thing exploded into a shower of polygons.

From there it was just finding and stabbing more of the porkchops-in-waiting.

The drops from the three boars were unfortunately lackluster as Helewise took stock in the aftermath, quietly taking heart in at least not yet having had to pop any of her potions. Two 'tattered boarhides', three 'cracked tusks' and a fourth 'chipped tusk', as well as a small collection of 'frenzy hoof's and miscellaneous 'boar meat's that might well have included bits of sinew and gristle in them, at least going by their little image in Helewise' inventory.

[The most an amateur skinner can likely hope for.] The little hint in the description of the hides was a small consolation at least, giving direction for a player looking to improve their drops, though Helewise would need to give up one of her starting skills if she wanted to do that right now. Both [Searching] and [Polearms] had leveled up a few times from her exploration and handful of fights. Not enough for any major unlocks yet, but enough that the spear already felt a bit lighter in her hands and the occasional distant figures seemed that tiny bit sharper.

If she recalled the guides right, you needed a Key Item to swap out your skills without resetting your levels on them. Unfortunately, they had clearly changed things from the Alpha, since the elf NPC who handed them out had been nowhere to be seen. Something to ask around about later, she'd hate to reset her progress just because she missed something as basic as 'just go to the pillar dungeon, dumbass, NPC at the entrance gives them out'. It had to be something tied to Main Story Quest, given how basic a function it was.

Decision made, she just started eyeing the next boar to bottom bother. Thankfully, there was no real risk of dodging a charge attack into the aggro range of a herd, so it was just a matter of not ending up like that first boar and trip because she didn't pay attention to the terrain.

Which was of course when she got startled by something else she had stopped paying attention to as a voice hollered over the hills.

"Hey! Uh… Spear girl!" "Not like that, idiot." A pair of players were approaching as the afternoon light started to shift towards evening, a muscular blonde man who looked like he'd run into the character creator's limitations while trying to build some sort of bare-chested barbarian archetype and come out looking like Chinese bootleg Conan and a young man with chestnut hair who looked like he'd tweaked every single slider on the character creator once and said 'good enough' to the result. Not entirely generic, but rather distinctly nondescript.

It made for something of a funny image then, that the muscled blonde was rubbing his side where his friend had elbowed him. "Is it just me or does the lack of pain make it feel super weird t'get hit?" "Not right now Joey, Ho there! Miss Ranger!" The friend in question waved Helewise' way, smiling. "How goes your hunt?"

Oh, huh, RPers? She supposed there would be more of them around, and she technically was one given she loved the idea of having what was basically a FullDive DnD campaign given all the freedom Cardinal provided in regards to dynamic dialogue and quests. Sure, the Alpha testers had grumbled about it being a bit chatbotty sometimes, but that'd been the Alpha like half a year ago and it'd just been meant to test how well NerveGear headsets performed compared to the bike-sized Medicuboids when it came to shaking hands with the human brain. Helewise had yet to run into any issue like that, everything felt so lifelike you'd forget it was a videogame if it wasn't for the semi-frequent system pop-ups.

Either way, she was more than happy to match the energy thrown her way, "Hah! Damn mediocre, I'll tell ya! Meat should be okay enough once minced or turned into jerky, and the rest… well, apprentice craftsmen need something cheap to practice on, is the best I can say. So at least I won't be sitting on a bunch'a junk at the end of the day."

"Well, perhaps we could help you out a little? If you have any need of it of course." They were speaking English, which was a certain strangeness in itself given this was the Japanese server. Not that there weren't going to be expats and foreign residents playing (hell, she was one), but they'd opened with English and hadn't been surprised when she'd answered with the same. "I'm Tri-uh… Zeero, and this is Jonah," the brunette's eyes slid over to his friend again, who was squinting at Helewise oddly. Or rather, squinting at a point just above her head, eyes slowly going between it and her face.

If the cursors above these two's own heads could have twinkled innocently, they might well have taken that moment to do so.

"Uhh… 'Zeero' I think…" The blonde pronounced his friend's screen name with the care of someone who might well be entirely unused to the concept of a pseudonym.

"What? I grabbed crafting remember?" "Yeah but…" 'Jonah's eyes slowly swung back up to Helewise' cursor again and then back down to her face, his cheeks reddening as the emotional emulation system responded to his embarrassment with an exaggerated awkward flush. 'At least Cardinal didn't go for the comically large sweatdrop.' "I don't think she's gonna give you a quest for it…"

"Why wouldn't she?"

"Well doesn't the green thingie mean she's a player?"

'…Oh, there's the sweatdrop.' The production of SAO's emotional reading engines was entirely cartoonish, thankfully, though seeing it pop up behind Zeero's realistic 3d visage was still quite odd as his eyes now swung up above Helewise' head, then back down, staring at her with a faintly horrified expression before turning beet red too. "Oh."

"Pffft. I thought you two were just newbie RPers!" Helewise snorted, struggling mightily to keep it to just that since these two were mortified enough as-is without someone outright laughing at them. She hoped the friend requests she shot out with a quick few swipes of her hand—kudos to whoever had made the interface, it was hideously intuitive—would take the bite off of it. With a party to watch her back she could start tackling boar herds just fine.

Jonah jumped in surprise at the friend request, then burst out laughing when Zeero looked about ready to bolt at the sheer indignity of it all before he tapped it and a little checkmark appeared on Helewise' screen. "Relax Tris-uh, Zeero."

"Relax?! Uuuugh…" His eyes rolled in a full circle before he finally deigned to accept the request as well. "Fu-uh… Frick," he shifted away from the curse halfway through it, "First impression completely blown."

"I mean I don't think that's anything bad if she's inviting us to be friends, hey-uh," Jonah's attention shifted back towards Helewise suddenly, the fact that he had an immediate source of knowledge to hand dawning on him. "What's 'Arpee-er' mean anyways?"

"Roleplayer, it means roleplayer," Zeero groaned behind him before Helewise could answer.

Jonah's expression turned to confusion again. "Wait, ain't that a sex thing?"

Helewise's willpower was outright herculean, the way she managed to keep her voice steady despite the witch-like cackle that was doing its damnedest to burst out of her ribcage, "Nah, that's E-RP, like how you got h-doujins as a pretty important distinction when you swing by Comiket."

"You've gone to Comiket? Lucky… Though musta been pretty expensive flying all the way out t' Japan." Jonah outright grinned, the expression looking oddly at home on his avatar's face.

Were these two using VPNs or something to get in the Japan server? But then why would they assume… ah, hell, nothing to do but to ask, "I actually live there nowadays, landed a pretty alright gig as an english teacher, but uh. If you are in America or Europe, how come you don't have five million ping from trying to connect to the Japan server?"

She was pretty sure it was automatically assigned by region, too. Maybe some friends overseas they wanted to hang out with in FullDive? It would be a pretty nice way to feel like you were actually spending time with someone even if there was an ocean or two in the way.

"No, it's been smooth." "What do you mean 'Japan server' we're on the American server aren't we?" Zeero and Jonah inquired in stereo, voices overlapping. They looked at each other, blinked, and both opened their mouths again before flinching back, expressions turning thoughtful.

"No, it doesn't make sense. Like you said," Zeero motioned to Helewise, shifting back and forth restlessly as though unsure who he should be speaking to. "The ping would be crazy if we were connecting to Japan wouldn't it?"

Jonah had opened his menu in the meantime and seemed to be scrolling through it, his accent growing thicker with nerves, "I'm sure I clicked 'America' at the start, didn't I? The whole Nerd Gear setup thingy."

"NerveGear," Zeero corrected absentmindedly, swiping the air to pull his own menu open, "maybe that's why we couldn't find Yugi earlier?"

"Aw man… There's gotta be an option to fix it though right?"

"We might need to remake our characters, I don't think they've got transfers yet. We'll just, uh…"

Zeero went still, his hand hovering uncertainly over the menu. "Hey-ah… Where's the 'Log Out' button?"

"What're you talking about it's right–..." Jonah's rebuttal died in his throat, giving way to a murmured 'the hell?'

One that Helewise echoed when she opened her menu and found the same. "...That makes no sense, I took a quick break to drink water while I was making my avatar and it let me log out just fine. Lemme send a ti—"

A bell tolled, the sound consuming her attempt to speak as it surrounded them. What should have had a source instead seemed to come from all around, bombarding them with noise.

At least it stopped when darkness bloomed around them, small mercy though it may have been.

What that too was swept away, they emerged to a familiar sight, the central plaza that had been their first sight in this world, seemingly packed to bursting as flashes of light heralded incoming teleportations in the dozens, hundreds, even thousands.

"...cket." Helewise trailed off, slowly lowering her finger.

Already the place seemed full to bursting, a moment's hesitation to take stock proving insufficient to the task as more people kept teleporting in. More than should have been on any one server, surely.

The whole population of Sword Art Online, brought together in a single place, the orange-streaked sky slowly giving way to colors that started as the ruddy shades of afternoon sunlight and ended on a monotone of baleful bloody red.
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[Spectral Waltz]

As you can see, this fic's version of SAO is a considerably more multinational affair with a much higher player count, 50,000 initial copies, though probably only around 80-90% of them actually end up locked in.

 

[Nihilo]

We actually pulled the number from the webnovel version.

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Chapter 3

The sky rippled, hexagonal tessellations blooming from a central point above the center of the square and flowing silver across the crimson. Eerie in their blatant falseness, they peeled back the skin of the virtual world to expose a glimpse of the digitality, a peek behind the curtain at the code that flowed beneath.

Then, the sky began to bleed.

There was no other word for it, a crimson liquid bubbling from the seams between one six-sided tile and the next, droplets slowly loosing to fall becoming streams of red. They curved impossibly as they descended, curling inwards and terminating in a liquid sphere that hung in the air, shifting, roiling, reshaping itself with each passing second into something less eldritch and more comprehensible. A vaguely humanoid shape draped in a sleek and ornate hooded robe, carmine with golden trim along its hems, not at all like the frayed and bulky thing that had hung from the hidden Skull Servant's bones.

With its appearance (ominousness aside) the mood in the square shifted from anxiety towards a nervous excitement. At least for most, Jonah looked about ready to piss himself.

"Is that a GM?"

"This must be part of the opening day."

"A bit inconsiderate though."

"Greetings, all players of Sword Art Online."

The voice did not boom or overwhelm with sheer volume. It resonated with a weight that made the air shiver with every word, carrying across the entire square with that alone. Next to Helewise Jonah muttered 'heck is he saying?' and received another elbow from his friend.

"Read the subtitles idiot."

"Subtitles? Oh shit, subtitles."

"You likely know me already. My name is Akihiko Kayaba." The figure spread its arms, and even with a name put to them, the lack of any hint at a face or body beneath the hovering robe made it difficult to think of the being beneath as human. "Welcome, to my world."

By now the mood had become downright cheery, the grumbling of those inconvenienced by this drowned out by the excitement. Of course Sword Art Online would hold some kind of event as a rehearsal of sorts for its launch day proper, a company that broke such ground had a certain right to their own hubris that made more than a few inclined to forgive their oversteps.

"I'm sure most of you have noticed something missing from your menus: the Log Out button. Let me assure you, this is not a defect in the game. I repeat… This is not a defect. You cannot log yourselves out of SAO, and no one from the outside world will be able to shut down or remove the NerveGear from your head."

The cheer shattered in an instant.

Disbelief, anger, confusion, uncertainty. The GM, Kayaba, was still speaking, the words piercing through the cacophony erupting around them, explaining the 'rules' of his world. Sweeping gestures of those empty sleeves brought up screens to hang in the air, news articles, video clips, a young man seizing in a bed as someone tried to snatch the helmet from his head, the pixelation covering his face insufficient to conceal the crimson leaking from his ears or the way he'd gone utterly still before the machine was even halfway off. Headlines escalating from individual reports to 'strings of mysterious deaths' to bold print warnings blaring across Newsstations and website banners the world over.

Death was death, and would be even in this new world.

The only way out, one hundred floors above them at Aincrad's apex, the Ruby Palace.

And at the conclusion of it all… applause?

A slow clap, ringing out across the noise and quieting it. One man's hands coming together in time with his measured steps as he walked from the edge of the square towards its center. Silver hair immaculately coiffed, a burgundy suit and ruffled collar, all put together to make an image few could fail to recognize. The founder and CEO of Industrial Illusions, creator of the world's most successful game.

"...Maximillion Pegasus…"

"Bravo!"

His voice had none of the unnatural weight Kayaba's did but it carried all the same. "Bravo Mister Kayaba, a truly wonderful speech."

Stunned silence, for it could not be any other sort, filled the space after those words until…

"Your presence changes nothing, you realize."

"Au contraire, my compatriot! My presence changes everything."

Helewise didn't like that wording or that tone, not one bit. It made the hairs of her neck stand on end.

This very clearly hadn't been in Kayaba's script and the confusion rippled through the assembled players. A saviour at the eleventh hour? The idea that this was all a bit of theater surged in some despite the gruesomeness that still lingered on the hanging screens.

"Do you believe that I will halt my plan for the sake of a single man?"

"My dear boy, whoever said anything about stopping?"

A dropped pin could have been deafening.

"No… Certainly not. But for all the fancy trappings of this game you've put together there is still something missing. You've always known it, haven't you?" Gold glittered behind the veil of silver and as Pegasus tipped his head to look directly up at the hovering robe the hair that always covered his left eye was swept back, revealing the metal facsimile that had taken its place. "You wish to make the steel castle of your dreams a reality, to craft the utterly fantastical into something all-but indistinguishable from life."

The robe went still, the slow little motions of hovering in place, the subtle shifting of the cowl, everything but for the faintest ripples along the hem stopped completely as Pegasus spread his arms wide.

"Rejoice, young man, for my Shadow Game will grant you your wish~"

Helewise could practically hear the capital letters on those words, the way speaking them made the atmosphere shift and writhe. The blood red sky swirled and darkened, the [System Announcement] tags flickering into being once more before shattering like glass, shards of letters raining down before dissolving into violet stars. An unseen gale blew through the square and players were sent stumbling with its force, though Pegasus stood unflinching while it tugged at his suit and lifted his hair.

"Your soul, and all of these souls with it, will make this world far more real than any dream, Mister Kayaba."

These words, spoken far more quietly, still carried on that wind, murmured in every player's ears.

Then Pegasus' eye shone and a thin beam of gold shot up into the shadowed hood before spreading downwards through the robe, fast and slow all at once. So much time and no time at all, the robe filled with light until it burst in a silent explosion that sent waves of gold rippling through the assembled players, sudden brightness overtaking them as the nature of the world around them shifted in a way no language had words for.

"Fuck was–, shit, Joey?" When the glow surrounding him cleared, Zeero's look had shifted, a little taller and a little younger, a teenager entering adulthood rather than a young man.

"It's Jonah in here innit? Wait, Tristan?" The muscular blonde's muscles had similarly faded, though they hadn't entirely vanished, and his golden hair had turned a slightly darker and more mundane shade. "Why d'you look like uh… You?"

"I could ask you the same question, uh… Helewise?"

Both of them turned, a little wide-eyed, because Helewise was still glowing, the light which had briefly started to fade now shining brighter again, filling her vision until -without fanfare- reality simply seemed to shatter around her, a distorted scream echoing in her ears as shards of her vision tumbled upwards, falling into blackness.

Until a familiar room of wood, brass, and velvet rose up to meet her, with a familiar avatar, Helewise, slumped and lifeless in the circle at its center.

Next to it, the long-discarded menu flickered slightly, the array of sliders and selectors shifting as new options slid into place around the old. Text distorting and glitching here and there as systems meant to be walled off from player interaction after that single use found themselves called upon once more.

Thing was, the player was no longer inside the avatar. Looking down revealed something hazy and so gangly it verged on the skeletal, a smog of greens and blacks and purples in only the barest of excuses for a humanoid bodyplan. A little shimmy and not even that remained, just an amorphous will flowing around the air like a streamer of water.

"'Your souls', huh?" The entity muttered in a voice without age or gender, just a faint Spanish accent. It figured the soul of someone who saw bodies as nothing but clothes, whose mind could pour itself into a vessel completely unlike what genetics had given it, would end up looking like this.

Assuming Pegasus wasn't full of bullshit, but something deep in the soul's nonexistent gut and bones said this was real. Something had gone a step beyond 'just' playing electromagnetic tricks on grey matter and into the realm of the supernatural.

It tasted so, so bitter to find out such a wondrous thing in such rotten circumstances.

Eyes which were nothing more than glowing spots on the churning morass of the self swiveled towards Helewise's body. An empty vessel, lovingly crafted to be iterated on, to write and live a story with. All the little snippets of maybes and could-bes tied together in a cloud of wishful thinking and escapist dreams that were now thoroughly ruined by the work of two madmen.

…

No.

If those dreams couldn't exist because of SAO and everything it represented, they would exist in spite of it. Those two had stolen and broken enough, this would not be allowed to join the tally. There was a vessel, there were tools, there was an opportunity.

It was simply a matter of realizing it to its fullest, in this hall of forgotten and decayed things.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Joey rushed into the space where Helewise had been, where the weird girl they'd just met had just sort of… Popped out of existence, form and glow and all bursting like a soap bubble.

"Is she dead? What happened?" Tristan was next to him an instant later, stumbling as someone jostled him, milling aimlessly. "Hey, watch it!" The crowds were shifting, the big hooded robe in the sky (what the fuck) that was apparently the game creator was gone, the actual literal Maximillion Pegasus (what the fuck) was nowhere to be seen.

…And this game was apparently going to kill them and possibly eat their souls (what the fuck) if they died in it.

People drifted aimlessly around them, none sparing a glance for the pair, needing to move but with no idea of where to go. Joey was peripherally aware that he and Tristan weren't the only ones to look like their real selves, or at least he had to assume that since he'd seen other people shift around when that light hit them.

None of them had vanished though, and staring at the stone wasn't giving him any answers. "It has to be–, I don't know, it has to be a prank or something, a trick. Souls?" Tristan just kept talking too, Joey knew on some level that was just how his friend was when things got stressful, just like how right now he really wanted to punch something or someone.

"We… We should go find Yugi. A-an' Tea's supposed t'be in here too, right?" He hated the way his voice wavered, the brief stutter as some part of him rebelled against the idea of just walking away, but he needed to be doing something right now, and this wasn't it.

His legs just… didn't want to move for some reason. Didn't want to walk away because he knew if he did he wouldn't be able to find this place again. The place where someone might have just died right in front of him.

He hadn't even really known her, but she'd still been a person.

It should have been heavier.

He didn't know how but it should have been.

"Joey, dude, we're not finding them if we stay here." The crowds had thinned a little bit they were getting restless, so much anger and fear all seeking an outlet. "We might need to get out of the city…"

"Out of the city? Where the monsters are? Are you crazy?" Joey didn't recognize that voice, some other player, presumably.

"Better than staying here." Tristan shot back. Other voices answered him, Japanese, something European, the subtitles flashed at the bottom of his vision, overlapping each other incomprehensibly as the system struggled to keep up.

"You heard that lunatic! We'll die! The government won't let us just get stuck here, as long as we sit tight–"

"And what if they do?! I didn't see them having much luck so far!" Other voices piped up, arguments and counter-arguments, politics and hate all coming to the fore in a confused jumble. Anger spread through the crowd like an infection. Joey could hear jostling, the sound of someone shoving someone else, then scrabbling, Tristan shouting something like 'back the fuck off!' and that of all things managed to get him standing, because when Tristan swore with that tone something was seriously badly wrong.

By his shoulder, a violet star burned into existence from nothingness.

That was all the warning before the air rippled around the flame, warping like cheap plastic left out in the sun, swelling and sagging to distort the press of bodies beyond it further before coming apart entirely. Limbs emerged from the wound in reality, necrotic purple-black fingers tipped in nails more akin what a blacksmith would hammer out burst through in a spray of broken 'glass', a toxic green reptilian eye gazing out from the gloom before the taloned hands gripped the jagged edge of the rent in the virtual space.

Or rather, bracing against it as a thunderous kick shattered the whole thing wide open, a bloodied and haggard figure shuffling out. Coarse white hair, two sets of horns, virulent violet corpsefire wafting from her sternum and licking along the ridges and spurs of her sinuous tail, patches of bruise-purple scales reminiscent of scorch marks. An outfit white as death and black as rot, ragged coat sleeves doing nothing to hide the gradual gangrenous darkening of the pallid skin as it went from the palm to the clawed fingertips.

"That..." The draconic woman wheezed with a dribble of blood, even as her flaming tail darted into the breach to retrieve a familiar boar spear before the hole mended itself thunderously a second later, "was a more literal clawing out than I wanted or needed."

A beat passed in absolute silence, Joey feeling rooted in place because the face was every kind of wrong but the voice sounded quite familiar, and the spear was downright identical. Probably, anyways…

Then someone screamed something in what might have been German and the spell broke, anger turning to panic as people tried to run from the 'monster' that had just emerged in their midst. Each spreading the news to the next, until the sheer weight of bodies trying to get away simply swept anyone trying to do the opposite along with them.

"Oh no you don't!" The 'monster' in question yelled as she dropped her spear, her tail instead snaking out to grab Tristan by the shoulder, yanking with both it and her hands until she pulled him out of the stampede like a plus sized tuna from the water.

Having one of their number suddenly plucked from their midst only encouraged the crowds to scatter faster, but that had sealed it for Joey and as the screams faded far enough for the sounds to dull with distance he found the question on the tip of his tongue. No matter how seemingly obvious the answer may have been.

"Helewise… 'Dat you?"

"Aye, newbie RPer." She chuckled roughly, confirming sure as anything that she really was Helewise before slit-pupils swivelled over to Tristain as she lowered him to the ground, "You holding out in there, man?"

"Uh…" His friend looked not a little bit shell-shocked, gaze swivelling between the half-unfamiliar features and the… Tail…

"Okay," it wasn't the firm 'okay' of acceptance, more of a hesitant acknowledgement of a reality that didn't make all that much sense to him. "...How are you doing that..?"

It took a moment for Joey to get it, Tristan staring significantly at the appendage that had grabbed him so deftly. "Hey no, yeah, how did you get a tail? Are you hacking or something? Is that why that… Whatever that was happened?"

"Pft. Nah, I figure whatever the hell those two did, it tried to check my brain for what I 'should' look like… and promptly shat itself because I don't sweat those kinds of details." Joey shared a look with Tristain, who returned a shrug as Helewise snorted, pulling a potion from her inventory with a slight funhouse mirror warping of the light. Then she bit the cork with very sharp teeth, twisting it out and spitting it off into the by now pretty empty plaza's floor, a quick chug and she… Well, she was still looking pretty rough what with the blood, but at least she didn't look like she had done three all-nighters back-to-back, "Phew, that's better. Anyways, system just gave up and kicked me back in the chargen room and woo boy was it glitchy in there once I got to work."

"I don't think there were 'tail' options…" Tristan started slowly, while Joey was still trying to parse the word 'chargen'.

"Like 'charging'?" He muttered to himself, before smacking his fist into his palm in sudden understanding, "Oh! The whole dressup room bit?"

"Hah, yup, that's the one. Anyways, what does that Yugi you mentioned look like? I'll keep an eye out in the fields, you look in the city?" Helewise asked.

…

Ah shit, Yugi!
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You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
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[swisspda]

Chapter 3

_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
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Click to shrink...

no threadmark but man pegasus AND kayba at once? worlds gotten down into the gutter but i vibe with this nihilo (did i spell it right?) very...."fuck it we ball and im going to ball with your skull" vibe

 

[Spectral Waltz]

no threadmark but man pegasus AND kayba at once? worlds gotten down into the gutter but i vibe with this nihilo (did i spell it right?) very...."fuck it we ball and im going to ball with your skull" vibe

Click to shrink...

Well... You might have noticed that the two aren't exactly collaborating...

 

[Nihilo]

Well... You might have noticed that the two aren't exactly collaborating...

Click to shrink...

I'm unsure if that makes things better or worse, frankly. Both of them are fucking around with things they barely understand, for reasons of "lol, lmao".

but i vibe with this nihilo (did i spell it right?) very...."fuck it we ball and im going to ball with your skull" vibe

Click to shrink...

You did, and yes. "Fuck you and fuck this, we're doing it live", pretty much.

 

[swisspda]

I'm unsure if that makes things better or worse, frankly. Both of them are fucking around with things they barely understand, for reasons of "lol, lmao".


You did, and yes. "Fuck you and fuck this, we're doing it live", pretty much.

Click to shrink...

tbh it'd be worse cause pre character arc pegasus is...lets say a dick and kayba is always a dick, yay i did spell it right, so it is correct to go "fuck you, fuck this, we're doing it live and your the audience" which is the only good way to react to all this bullshittery...

also the new characters great especially the handlebars (come on its QQ i had to say it lol) and general experience now, we had the smol helpful ranger now we got the regular sized...uh...swordbearer? tbh i dont know where the character is gonna go cause nihilo just got introduced again in a different body (i can tell cause nihilo is generally helpful) and we dont know their theme yet aside from..well "monster" according to the other idiots near tristan n...joey? ima say joey cause hes got that drawl

 

[Firmament]

tbh i dont know where the character is gonna go cause nihilo just got introduced again in a different body (i can tell cause nihilo is generally helpful) and we dont know their theme yet

Click to shrink...

I recognise the character being used as a faceclaim, and they do seem rather fitting for Helewise's thematics.

Spoiler

The character is Eblana from Arknights. I'm not very familiar with her story but IIRC she has blue 'necromantic' flames which let her raise and control undead. Considering Helewise's encounter with an undead NPC seems to be setting her up for building a deck full of undead monsters, the faceclaim feels appropriate.

 

[swisspda]

I recognise the character being used as a faceclaim, and they do seem rather fitting for Helewise's thematics.

Spoiler

The character is Eblana from Arknights. I'm not very familiar with her story but IIRC she has blue 'necromantic' flames which let her raise and control undead. Considering Helewise's encounter with an undead NPC seems to be setting her up for building a deck full of undead monsters, the faceclaim feels appropriate.

Click to shrink...

Seems legit so I wonder what monsters she's going to run...and a theme she's going with with another deck if she has too...

 

[Nihilo]

Skulls will see some use for sure as a supplemental thing. Vampires may pop up in some capacity (Vampire Fraulein makes me act unwise). But neither of those will be the core of her deck.

Also, regarding the faceclaim, and this is spoilers for Arknights:
Eblana, in Arknights, stages her own death literally then uses her magic to lurch to unlife as a very smug zombie once the coast is clear.

EDIT: This particular set of images are the ones that really locked it in for me, although they naturally won't be seeing direct use in this fic. It still gets the vibe across.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/11125585?q=necrass_(arknights)+blood
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/11125593?q=necrass_(arknights)+blood
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/11126566?q=necrass_(arknights)+blood

 

[swisspda]

Skulls will see some use for sure as a supplemental thing. Vampires may pop up in some capacity (Vampire Fraulein makes me act unwise). But neither of those will be the core of her deck.

Also, regarding the faceclaim, and this is spoilers for Arknights:
Eblana, in Arknights, stages her own death literally then uses her magic to lurch to unlife as a very smug zombie once the coast is clear.

EDIT: This particular set of images are the ones that really locked it in for me, although they naturally won't be seeing direct use in this fic. It still gets the vibe across.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/11125585?q=necrass_(arknights)+blood
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/11125593?q=necrass_(arknights)+blood
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/11126566?q=necrass_(arknights)+blood

Click to shrink...

Absolutely based n smugpilled, are ya gonna do the same thing in this nihilo? /Joke

 

[Nihilo]

Absolutely based n smugpilled, are ya gonna do the same thing in this nihilo? /Joke

Click to shrink...

Technically already did.

 

[Isiri Pudireach]

"Pft. Nah, I figure whatever the hell those two did, it tried to check my brain for what I 'should' look like… and promptly shat itself because I don't sweat those kinds of details."

Click to shrink...

Ya know, with this now being a Shadow Game, I wouldn't be suprised if this affects Hella Unwise's actual body.

Vampire Fraulein makes me act unwise

Click to shrink...

Cute, if a bit basic

 

[Nihilo]

Cute, if a bit basic

Click to shrink...

It has some nice detailing once you manage to find art at a decent resolution, which isn't easy let me tell you.

https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/492d1472687b.jpg

Spoiler

Ya know, with this now being a Shadow Game, I wouldn't be suprised if this affects Hella Unwise's actual body.

Click to shrink...

Fun fact, that name means "Healthy and wide / hale and wise".

And yeah, I'm wondering how @Spectral Waltz will handle that (especially since while Helewise is probably the most extreme example of this particular hiccup, she isn't the only one who had things get weird), but it's very much in the realm of "fic epilogue and pondering a possible sequel".

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Effects on others actual bodies are mid-late game territory revelations, or when a certain very particular character makes their appearance at the very least.