Chapter 4

Two thousand players were dead within a month.

In that time, we never received a single message from outside,

much less any kind of resolution to our crisis.

I didn't stick around to see it for myself, but tales of the panic

that erupted when it finally sank in that there was no escape told

of sheer madness and chaos. The crowd wailed, cried, and raged.

Some even claimed they would destroy the game world, making

futile attempts to dig up the cobblestones of the city square.

Needless to say, the structures were permanent, immovable

pieces of the game environment, and the demolition didn't last

long. It took several days for full acceptance of the status quo to

sink in and new plans to emerge.

The players split up into four rough categories.

First and largest of those groups, at nearly half the game's

population, were those who chose not to believe Akihiko Kayaba's

conditions for release and simply waited for help. Their reasons

were painfully understandable. Our bodies were sitting on chairs

or beds in real life, living and breathing. Those were our real

selves, and what happened here was just temporary. One simple

little change of circumstances and we could go back. Not through

the log-out button in the menu, perhaps, but surely there was

something if we just figured out what it was…

The other source of hope was that the game's developer, Argus

(to say nothing of the government itself), was most certainly making every effort possible to rescue us. If we were simply calm and

patient, we would eventually wake up in our beds, surrounded by

our loving families. We might even be temporary celebrities at

school or work.

It was hard not to fall into this line of thinking. Part of me was

hoping for the same thing. This group of players chose to "wait."

They stayed within the first city, using their initial allotment of

money—measured in a currency known as col—bit by bit to buy

food and cheap lodgings, grouping together in loose cliques.

Fortunately, the Town of Beginnings took up nearly a fifth of

the first floor, as large as one of the smaller wards of Tokyo. This

meant there was more than enough capacity for five thousand

players to settle in without feeling cramped.

But as time dragged on, there was no sign of help. Every waking moment brought the same scenery outside the window: not a

blue sky, but the gloomy cover of rock and metal looming overhead like a giant lid. Their initial allotment of money wouldn't

last forever, and the waiters would eventually have to do something.

The second group made up about 30 percent. These three thousand players decided that cooperation was the best chance of survival. The leader of the group was the manager of one of Japan's

biggest websites about online gaming.

Under his supervision, players were grouped together into

smaller bands, sharing items and col, and trading information

about the labyrinths that housed the staircases to the next floor.

The leader's group claimed Blackiron Palace, the castle that

loomed over the central square of the Town of Beginnings, from

which they sent instructions to smaller parties and accumulated

supplies.

This massive gathering was without a proper title for some

time, but once they all started wearing the same uniform, the

"Army" label stopped being just a cute nickname.

The third category, of which there were about a thousand people,

were the ones who wasted their col early, didn't feel like braving

the monsters in the wilderness, and began to get desperate.

Incidentally, even in the virtual world of SAO, there are inescapable natural urges—hunger and sleep. It made sense that

you needed to sleep. Regardless of whether the stimuli received

are real or virtual, the brain needs to turn off and recharge at

some point. When players get tired, they find inns, rent rooms

that suit their pocketbooks, and sink into their beds. With enough

col, it's possible to buy a residence in the town of your choice, but

it's a monumental task.

The hunger was more of a mystery. Though we don't like to

imagine it, presumably our real bodies are being kept alive

through some means of force-feeding. Eating food in SAO doesn't

actually fill our bellies in real life. Yet stuffing virtual bread or

meat into your face will get rid of the hunger and make you feel

sated. You'll have to ask a neurologist to explain how that works.

On the other hand, once you start feeling hungry, it'll never go

away until you eat. I don't think fasting could actually end in starvation, but it's still a natural urge that is incredibly hard to resist.

So every day, players rush into pubs and restaurants run by

NPCs, stuffing their bellies with food made of pure data. And

that's where the digestive process ends, by the way. No use

dwelling on the less pleasant aspects.

But enough about that.

Most of the players who'd wasted their initial earnings and

started going hungry wound up with no other choice but to join

the Army. After all, orders were easy to follow if they were the

only way you got fed at the end of the day.

But even in virtual worlds, there are those to whom cooperation is anathema. The ones who resisted joining any groups or got

kicked out for causing trouble wound up inhabiting the slums of

the Town of Beginnings, living a life of crime.

Town interiors were a protected zone where the system prevented players from harming each other, but there were no rules

outside of town. Vagabonds teamed up with their own kind,

avoiding monsters for the easier and more rewarding prey of unsuspecting adventurers.

At least they didn't stoop to killing—for the first year. This

group of players grew over time until it reached my estimated

count of around a thousand.

The fourth and final category might as well be titled "miscellaneous."

Around five hundred players who wanted to help conquer the

game but didn't want to join the Army formed roughly fifty

smaller groups known as guilds. They were a positive force in our

advancement through the game, using their limited resources

more nimbly than the Army's massive bureaucracy could manage.

There was also the extreme minority of crafters and traders.

These two to three hundred players formed guilds of their own,

focusing on the skills that would enable them to raise col and

make a living without fighting.

The remaining several dozen adventurers, myself included,

were the solo players. We were the individualists who chose to act

alone rather than join any group, either out of self-interest or because we felt it was the most effective means of survival. Most of

the solos were former beta testers. We'd called upon our prior experiences to fly out of the gate at the game's start, but once we

were powerful enough to handle monsters and robbers on our

own, we found little reason to work with others.

On top of that, SAO was a game without magic (i.e., easy longrange attacks), which meant that enemies were fairly easy to

manage single-handedly, even when they came in groups. With

proper skill, a good solo player could earn experience much faster

than he could with a group.

Not that this was without risks. For example, contracting

paralysis while in a party just meant that someone else had to

heal you. On your own, it could be a death sentence. The fatality

rate among solo players was easily the highest of any category.

But with enough knowledge and experience to properly avoid

danger, the returns easily outweighed the risks. And we beta

testers had an advantage over the others in those categories. As

the solos used their knowledge to far outpace the new players, serious friction developed between the two groups, and when the

initial chaos eventually settled, the solo players all left the first

floor to settle in towns higher up.

Within Blackiron Palace was a room formally known as the

Chamber of Resurrection. Since the beta test, a massive metallic

epitaph had appeared there, etched with the names of all ten

thousand players. It had been thoughtfully designed such that

when a player died, his or her name was very clearly crossed out,

with the time and cause of death printed next to it.

It only took three hours for someone to earn the honor of

being the first. The cause of death was not monsters, but suicide.

The unfortunate victim claimed that due to the structure of the

NerveGear, if we simply removed ourselves from the game system, we would automatically leave the program and regain consciousness on the other side. He climbed over the tall railing of

the terrace on the south edge of town, the very outer border of

Aincrad itself, and threw himself overboard.

No matter how hard you peered down, there was never the

slightest hint of land or any other surface beneath Aincrad. Nothing but endless sky and layer upon layer of clouds. With the

crowd at the terrace watching, the man's scream grew steadily

fainter as he plummeted, until he finally disappeared through the

cloud layer.

Two minutes later, his name was unceremoniously, mercilessly crossed out on the monument. His cause of death: fell from

a great height. I don't want to think about what he experienced

on that fall. Whether he reawoke in the real world or got brainfried, as Kayaba claimed, was impossible to determine from

within the game. But most players agreed that if it were that easy

to escape, we'd all have been detached from the outside and rescued by now.

Still, there were others here and there who also succumbed to

the temptation of such a simple conclusion. It was extremely difficult to fully appreciate the concept of death within SAO.

That still hasn't changed. The visual effect of polygons breaking apart when HP reaches zero is just too close to the GAME OVER

screen, a harmless phenomenon familiar to all gamers. The only

way to fully understand death in SAO is to experience it for oneself. I have no doubt that the mental distance from our supposed

mortality was a major contributing factor to the decline in population.

When the Army, the other minor guilds, and the wait-and-see

types clogging the Town of Beginnings finally started tackling the

game itself, we started losing people to the monsters.

Experience and instincts are necessary to win battles in SAO.

The trick is to not try doing everything on your own—you have to

"ride" the system's automatic support.

Take a simple, single-handed uppercut slice. If you've learned

the One-Handed Sword category and "Upward Slice" is equipped

in your list of sword skills, all you need to do is perform the

proper motion, and the system will move your body automatically. If you don't have the skill equipped and try to mimic the

movements on your own, the result will be so much slower and

weaker that there's no point even trying it. In essence, the knack

to combat in SAO was a bit like pulling off combos in a fighting

game.

Those who couldn't get the grasp of the system just swung

their swords back and forth lamely, scuffling against even the

weakest boars and wolves, enemies that were easily defeated with

the most basic of initial skills. And even if your health was dwindling and the fight was proving difficult, there was always the option of disengaging and retreating to avoid death…

Except that unlike fighting 2-D monsters on a simple TV

screen, the incredible realism of SAO's world brought forth a kind

of primal fear in its players. In every encounter, you were faced

with actual monsters bearing wicked fangs, ready to charge and

kill.

Plenty of beta testers felt an initial panic when they first experienced the combat of SAO, but that was nothing compared to

fighting with the specter of actual death overhead. When the

grips of fear took over, players forgot even the most basic of skills

or dodges, becoming helpless targets as their hit points were torn

from them.

Suicide. Defeat in combat. The lines on the epitaph proliferated, unstoppable and uncaring.

When the number of dead topped two thousand in just the

first month, the remaining population was plunged into black despair. If that mortality rate continued, we'd all have been dead

within half a year. Clearing all hundred floors was just a pipe

dream.

The thing about human beings is, we learn.

After just over a month, we had finally conquered the first

floor of Aincrad. It took only ten days for the second to fall, and

by then the death rate was plummeting. As survival tips spread

throughout the population, people began to realize that as long as

they earned experience and gained levels, the monsters weren't

so frightening after all.

Maybe we can beat this game. Maybe we can get back to the

real world. Confidence and optimism dared to peek their heads

out once again.

The top floor of Aincrad was impossibly far away, but that

hope was enough to jump-start us into motion. The world began

ticking away again.

It's been two years. There are twenty-six floors left to conquer

and six thousand survivors. Such is the present state of Aincrad.